Working in the field, cutting grain, John swung the scythe with more and more force. He stopped, looked out to the neighboring field. It should have been his son’s land. It was owed to him. And today, he would purchase it.
When the colony’s land had last been divided, each free man, woman, and child was entitled to one acre. His eldest son, John, was living with and working for Richard Warren’s family, as was common to do, to learn a trade and ease the burden. When the announcement was made of who would get what parcels of land, Master Billington went to the meeting hall with the rest, not hopeful for the most favored land, for he was not well-regarded by those making the decisions, but he anticipated four acres. After all, he had two children and a wife.
Myles Standish read the names, the acreage, and pointed on a map of the locations.
Midway through the list, his name was called. For Master Billington, three parcels, Standish said, and pointed to a place near the brook.
They had given him three parcels, not the four he was due.
John Billington did not make the snort he wished to, nor the cry of outrage that, as a younger man, he would have made. Instead, he was patient for Bradford’s ear.
Once the announcements were over, he followed Bradford through the crowd.
He waited until Bradford was exiting the group before he said, Four acres is due me, Governor Bradford.
Governor Bradford turned, but only halfway.
You were granted three parcels: one for you, your wife, and your youngest son.
The fourth?
Your eldest is not living with you, Master Billington. The requirement is that all members of your household must be living in your house.
Bradford knew it was common practice to send your eldest out to another family so that they could learn, not become too soft and reliant on their mothers, and also bring in more money for the family. No one ever spoke of living at home as a requirement.
Where does it say that, Governor?
There were no laws then, nothing written, anyway.
Every new situation calls for considerations.
These considerations were meant only for certain people. Bradford was walking away, toward his house, smiling at people around Billington’s head as they passed, greeting, doing every trick to say to Billington, You are not worthy of this conversation with me.
John Billington was so angry he took to the fields, where he found himself on his knees. He had cried only a few times: When his wife agreed to marry him. At the sight of his mother in the stocks, her face painted over in white cream to hide the red, cracking sores. No one should treat a woman that way, even if accused a whore. She did what she had to, and for meeting the wishes of wealthy men, she was hanged. How little his people were given, would ever be given.
He worked the scythe, chopped the barley with more force.
Ever since he was not granted the land owed him, Billington worked quietly. He kept away from the hypocrites, did not go to Sunday service despite how forced upon them it was, unofficially. He developed a plan.
He went to Merrymount, thirty miles north, to seek out friends who understood, friends to dance and sing with, friends to help him forget. And when he was done forgetting, he took to fighting again. He wrote an angry letter to the investors but as soon as the letter was out of his hands and on the ship heading eastward, Billington had regret. It would not work, going above the hypocrites by writing to their lenders. Investors had no reason to believe him, a Billington. Truth has no value when riches are involved. One is loyal to the class closest to his own. The investors had yet to reply.
Finally, he conceded, if he wanted the land, he would have to pay for it. No one in the colony was to trade with Indians without approval from the puritan leaders and no one like Billington would ever be approved for trading. For the wealthy, a crime is rarely a crime. Living amongst hypocritical leaders required clandestine means.
Who traded with the Indians? Those who did the approving: William Bradford, Myles Standish, Edward Winslow. The colony leaders traded as it suited them, and their pockets were heavy with the profit he, John Billington, was forbidden from having. When Billington had extra gunpowder, extra ale—he got nothing.
Billington went to his friend Thomas Morton of Merrymount, who found a buyer for his extra goods. Morton was a lawyer from England, but one of the few good ones, who had, before coming to New England, advocated for his poorer countrymen.
Billington had met Morton when an invitation spread about a May Day celebration in Merrymount. Merrymount, built as a trading post, was loosely under Plymouth’s jurisdiction at the time. When Billington heard the Plymouth elders rail against Merrymount for the community’s Bacchanalian ways—men and women lying openly together, dancing around the Maypole, Indian and English trading and imbibing ale as suited them—John Billington knew he must attend. Anything the hypocrites despised, Billington had learned from the years living amongst them, was likely something he would enjoy.
Thomas Morton called himself not the leader but the steward of Merrymount. He was wary of the corruption leadership caused. On John Billington’s first trip to Merrymount he saw how jolly the place was, which further put into relief the dourness of Plymouth. But Plymouth was where he had land, and where his son was buried, and he would not let that wretched lot of hypocrites run him out of town, too.
The spring before, Thomas Morton had been chased out of Merrymount by Standish’s militia, as all good, profiting, dissenting men were. Chased away because unlike the hypocrites, he made friends with the Indians. He had fun and, most crucially, he made money. The Indians preferred trading with him to trading with the puritans. The elders did not tolerate money being made that did not benefit them. Standish ordered the militia to burn Thomas Morton’s house and claimed they did so because of Morton’s erection of the Maypole. The puritan leaders sentenced Morton to a small island off the coast, until an English ship can return you to London, Bradford had said. But that was a lie. They sent him to that rocky, inhospitable land to starve.
You’ll pay for this, Morton said, pointing a finger at Bradford, his last words before he was put into the shallop.
Morton had friends in high places. If anyone could make that threat, and keep it, it would be him.
On Billington’s last trip to Merrymount, his Algonquian connection told him Morton was not dead, but back in London. He had been kept alive by Algonquian friends sailing out to that island with food.
This past season, after Morton’s exile, Billington had fished instead of hunted, to save his gunpowder. And now, with the arrival of new colonists, and the new parceling of land to them, this was his opportunity to purchase the plot before new property lines were made. He just needed a little more money. Just one more trade.
Morton had told him who would purchase at the highest price.
In case something happens to me, Morton had said, in an uncharacteristically solemn moment. They drank ale around the fire and revelers danced in the distance.
Billington had wanted that land ever since it had been denied him. But then, in spring his eldest, John, had fallen ill at Warren’s house, and what that land represented was now so much more.
At midday, John Billington would meet a man by the lake that his youngest son, Francis, had discovered. Billington Sea, it was called, for the first Englishman to find it, named it. Billington Sea, though called differently by the man he was meeting. Two miles west, just barely out of Plymouth, which was a risk.
Billington was working the scythe, thinking of this impending journey, this one last trade, when he saw a tall man, red-cheeked and young, approaching him. As the man got closer, he recognized him as a Johnson boy. Well-liked, that family was. This Johnson had a bushy beard and thick brown hair on his arms. His sleeves were rolled up and in his arms was his new daughter, Mary, born two months ago. Her mother, Billington knew, as the whole town did, had died in childbirth.
Something must be wrong. Billington set down his scythe and went toward him.
It’s Mary. We pray over her but the fever persists.
Billington observed the infant. She was splotchy from crying, but kept her eyes closed. He looked out on the field.
It was ye that convinced Lyford. And helped the Conners. Please. Anyone that could baptize.
Billington had persuaded the former Plymouth pastor, John Lyford, to preach to all of Plymouth, not just the puritans. They needed their children baptized, in the Anglican way, to protect them from death. The hypocrites forbade it.
When a boy was dying and needed an Anglican baptism, Pastor Lyford had agreed, though it took some persuasion. Sunday pie made by Eleanor and what trade items the Anglicans among them could spare. The boy survived. Lyford was found out by the elders and warned. Still, on Sunday mornings, Pastor Lyford led the puritan congregation at the meetinghouse and on Sunday evenings, at a commoner’s house, Lyford whispered the Gospel to the Anglicans. Again he was found out and this time, Bradford held a big trial, the first in the colony. Lyford was accused of consorting with the vile and profane colonists, Captain Shrimp had the gall to say aloud. When confronted, Lyford burst into tears. He was given six months to leave the colony.
Since then, Plymouth was without a pastor, and one hypocrite elder, Master Brewster, served as lay minister for the puritans. Brewster would never perform an Anglican baptism. Would likely have Billington hanged for asking.
The infant whimpered, then fell silent.
Billington’s corn looked strong, nearly ready to be harvested.
Let me see her, John Billington said, and outstretched his hands.
The young father put his daughter in Billington’s arms.
She was lighter than he imagined and floppy. Billington had seen this look of a baby before. An infant on the Mayflower, two infants here, and his own younger brother. The infant, he felt certain, would die. If he went asking for a favor and found a lay minister to baptize the girl, he would be asking him to break the law. Billington would be risking his standing in the colony—not that his standing was much—as well as the lay minister’s. He would also be risking their lives. A puritan pastor would be banished from the colony for such actions, as Lyford was, but the two commoners would be hanged.
Billington put his finger to hers. Slowly she wrapped her hand around his index finger. Her grip was faint. His sons never seemed this small. Never this weak. But he believed in miracles. A baptism had worked before.
Go to Master Tomlan. Tell him I sent you. He’ll know what to do.
God bless ye, God bless ye, Billington, the young father said, nearly jumping.
If you want her to live, tell no one where you went or to whom you sp0keth.
You have my word.
Johnson thanked him again and loped quickly through the field toward town.
Billington made his way home. One more trade and he would have enough money to purchase his son’s acre. But first, he must ready his gun. He held the image of his dead son’s face in his mind and vowed that he would fight for what was rightfully Billington land.