The Vanishing Point Page 5

  In August 1692, she boarded the Cornucopia and sailed out of Bristol.

  II

  7. The Bower of Eden

  Hannah

  1692

  In Faith, I assure you Maryland is so beautifull and abundant that many have called it the Bower of Eden. Our Bay is full of Oysters and Striped Bass. The Land about the Bay is rich in Soil. Here do grow many towering White Oaks as grand as any in England. Indeed, when the Land is cleared and cultivated, it does resemble our native Gloucestershire. The Season for Growing and Planting is long and Winters but a mild Interlude—a mere Dream, if you will. In our Forests grow Wild Cherrys, Plums, Persimmons, and Strawberrys. Hickory and Walnut grow in plenty, and we do have Tulip Trees with flame-like gold and red Flowers. I need not tell you that many a Gentleman Planter has made his Fortune growing Tobacco in our Tidewater Districts. A full-sized Ship can sail up the Chesapeake and there reach the most far flung Plantations. The Indians here are peaceable. There are many who say that Maryland and Virginia shall be the wealthiest Region in the Americas.

  Trying to keep her balance on the rocking deck, Hannah reread Cousin Nathan's letter to her father. "The Bower of Eden," she murmured as people shoved past to spew over the rail. A storm had blown the ship off course. The journey ahead would be long. After two weeks of staring into the waves, she had come to believe that the ocean itself was her new world, possessing a topography all its own, with precipitous mountains the ship barreled over only to slip into treacherously deep valleys.

  The sailors had told her to banish seasickness by looking at the horizon. But how could she when the horizon was as evershifting and inconstant as everything else? There was much that confounded her. May's letters had not made Maryland sound like a Bower of Eden in the least. By this time her sister had been married for three years, with one baby born, perhaps a second on the way. Would she even recognize May? Had motherhood and the hard life in the wilderness made her robust and ruddy like Joan, or thin and haggard? And what of her husband? He would cease to be an enigma, Hannah thought. She would finally get to see him face to face.

  ***

  She shared her sleeping box with a woman named Elizabeth Sharpe and her two sons, Will and Ned, aged eight and ten. Elizabeth would not allow her boys to sleep in the men's quarters. "God only knows what unsavory characters are lurking on a ship such as this. And you," she said, "must stay close by me. Let no one know you are an orphan. There are evil men what prey on girls such as you."

  Elizabeth's husband had gone over eight years before as an indentured servant. "Last year he got his freedom," she told Hannah. "His master gave him seventy acres on the Eastern Shore. He's the first of our folk to ever have his own land."

  Although Elizabeth's hair was thin and she was missing half her teeth, Hannah sensed that she had once been pretty. When she spoke of her husband, her eyes shone with pride. "My Michael can read and write, he can. When he was a lad, he had a kind master what taught him his grammary." Back in England, Elizabeth had begged the vicar to read her husband's letters to her. Now Hannah read them aloud as they huddled on the deck, trying to shelter from the wind.

  Her husband's reports had made Elizabeth wise to the ways of the colony. When Hannah told her that her brother-in-law was a tobacco planter, Elizabeth just laughed. "A planter! Every cracker and freed slave calls himself a planter. Half of what folk call plantations are miserable smallholdings. After three years, the land goes barren, and they try to sell it back to the Indians. I hope your brother-in-law owns a few hundred acres." She pressed her hands together. "We only have seventy, but my Michael is a clever farmer. I hope we pull a decent crop the first year and buy more land. If we have enough acres, some might lie fallow until the soil is fertile again."

  ***

  The ocean seethed. Hannah learned to walk in broad strides, shifting her weight from one foot to the other with the roll of the waves. She tried not to stare at the indentured servants, whose threadbare clothing and gaunt faces set them apart. They received the scantiest rations. In the hold, they slept six to a box. Most were men and boys, but there were a few women and girls. Elizabeth told her that many of them had been let out of debtors' prison, poverty being their only crime.

  "When we get into port, the gentlemen planters will buy all the healthy young ones. But the sickly ones will be shipped straight back to Bristol Gaol."

  "Do they not get their freedom back after seven years of indenture?" Hannah asked.

  "If they survive the climate and fevers of the place," said Elizabeth. "Pity the servants what are wenches. In no time, their masters will be at them, seeking to roger them at every turn. If a master gets a wench with child, he can prolong her indenture. The only virgin in the colony is a girl what can outwit her master."

  She clutched Hannah's arm and pointed at a pair of gentlemen planters striding across the deck. Their linen shirts, even after seven weeks at sea, looked almost clean. The feathers in their hats bobbed like living things.

  "They do own many servants," Elizabeth whispered, "and many more slaves besides. Africans are the only ones what can bear the climate. Mark my words, Hannah. Late summer is the season of fevers. Many an English servant will sicken and die ere he sets foot off the ship. But the Africans will go on working."

  ***

  After ten weeks on board, everyone on the vessel stank like a goat. The gentry tried to mask their stench with eau de cologne. The salt pork ran out, and the biscuit was infested with mold. The water tasted foul. One morning Hannah awoke with a burning forehead, her bowels in agony. Half the people on board were ill. Weak as she was, it was too awful to stay in the dank hold and breathe everyone else's offal and sickness. Swollen-headed, she leaned against the ship rail. In her fever, she fancied she saw tulip trees rising from the waves. Their crimson-gold flowers were like shooting flames.

  She cleaved to her vision of those radiant trees, trying to see only them and not the corpses that the sailors launched overboard. Elizabeth's boys pointed and shouted as sharks devoured the bodies.

  8. Anne Arundel Town

  Hannah

  HANNAH SQUEEZED ELIZABETH'S arm as they leaned over the ship rail to view the harbor front of Anne Arundel Town. The place appeared to be little more than a village of around forty roughly constructed houses. Cows and sheep grazed in pens between the buildings. Her eyes anchored on the church where her sister and Gabriel had married.

  "Oh, Hannah. Somewhere down there will be my Michael. I wonder if I'll recognize him after all these years."

  Most of the people on the pier wore buckskin and rough homespun, except for the gentlemen planters in their linen and brocade. Everyone seemed in good cheer to see the ship. Yet something about the crowd troubled Hannah—there were no old people. She remembered Elizabeth's talk of contagion, the toll the brutal climate exacted.

  "Of course, you will know your own husband," she told Elizabeth, hoping to chase away dark thoughts. She asked herself if she would be able to pick May out of a crowd when the time came. Her sister didn't know she was coming—there had been no chance to send a letter that would arrive before the ship did. Hannah would disembark at Banham's Landing, fifteen miles up the Sequose River from the Washbrook Plantation. She had heard it would take another two weeks before the ship reached the mouth of that river. But the Washbrooks would be there to deliver their tobacco harvest. Wouldn't May be surprised to see her? Wouldn't it be a dream to see her sister again?

  "How do I look?" Elizabeth asked. "Clean and decent?"

  The night before, they had moored at Jamestown, Virginia, where the crew had brought barrels of fresh water aboard. The captain would fetch better prices for the indentured servants if they washed before the auction. Hannah and Elizabeth had soaped and scrubbed themselves from their toes to their hair, then Elizabeth had given her boys a good sponging. Hannah dug to the bottom of her trunk for a fresh shift, but she was saving her good bodice and petticoat for her arrival at Banham's Landing.

  "Look," said El
izabeth. "They're lowering the gangplank." Ned and Will edged away from their mother as she began to weep. "Oh, what if he hasn't come for me, Hannah?" She looked terrified. "What if he's forsaken me? What will I do?"

  "Stop talking nonsense." Hannah took her hand. "Of course he'll be there."

  "Come down to the pier with me," Elizabeth begged her. "Hannah, please. I don't want to stand alone down there like a servant waiting to be sold off."

  They waited until it was their turn to file down the gangplank.

  "Don't leave my sight!" Elizabeth shouted to her boys. "Stay close by me. We mustn't lose one another." She took each of her sons by the hand. Hannah watched her search the sea of faces for her husband.

  There were few women in the crowd, but Hannah's heart surged when she saw a young mother with wide blue eyes who was struggling to quiet a squalling tot. Of course it couldn't be May. Yet the illusion was perfect. Hannah allowed herself to pretend that the moment of reunion was upon her. Then the strange woman turned her head, revealing a pockmarked cheek. No, it couldn't be her May. No pox had ever touched her May.

  Elizabeth made a noise from deep in her throat as a man approached. Though he was scarred in the face and thin as a barber pole, his smile was enough to bring fresh tears to Elizabeth's eyes. "Is that my Betty?" he asked. "Is that my girl?"

  Hannah looked away to give them their privacy. She heard her friend crying in his arms, heard him gently hushing her. Ned and Will hung close by Hannah and traded nervous glances. Eight-year-old Will had been in his mother's womb when his father sailed to the colony. Hannah reckoned that even ten-year-old Ned couldn't have much memory of him.

  Their father called their names. "Are these my little men?" He threw his arms around them, drawing their heads to his bony chest.

  Elizabeth took Hannah's elbow. "This is Hannah Powers. She read your letters to me on the ship."

  Michael Sharpe bowed to her. "We live near Cambridge on the Eastern Shore," he said. "You are always welcome."

  Hannah smiled. "You are kind, sir." It was comforting to know she already had friends in the New World.

  "Look!" Little Will grabbed her hand and pointed.

  The auction had begun. A girl she recognized from the ship stood on a barrel while planters in plumed hats pointed their walking sticks at her and placed their bids.

  "Two hogsheads for that wench."

  "You say two for a healthy girl of seventeen?" The first mate, presiding over the auction, lifted his eyebrows incredulously. "Young and pretty, no pox on her. Sure she'll make some lonely man a good wife."

  Laughter shook the crowd. The girl on the barrel stood without flinching, her strong chin pointed toward the distant hills. The rumor on the ship was that she had been a kitchen girl made pregnant by her master's son. Her baby had been stillborn.

  A man in homespun clothes with a hickory walking stick stepped forward. "I bid four."

  A while later, Hannah heard Michael Sharpe tell his wife that their ferry for the Eastern Shore was about to sail. Elizabeth threw her arms around Hannah's neck. "If you ever need anything, write to my husband."

  "I am happy for you," she whispered, holding Elizabeth tightly before letting her go.

  "Can Hannah come with us?" Will asked.

  "No," Hannah told him firmly. "I am to meet my sister and her family."

  "Does she have little boys?" Will sounded jealous.

  "She has a child I have never met." Hannah stooped so that her head was level with his. "I don't know if it's a boy or girl."

  Elizabeth embraced her again while the boys waved goodbye. Michael Sharpe doffed his hat. "Good luck to you, Hannah Powers."

  Hannah waved until she lost sight of them in the crowd. Suddenly alone, she wondered what to do with herself. The smell of roasting meat caused her empty stomach to growl. Beyond the pier, she made out the cookstalls. After twelve weeks of dry biscuit and weak beer, she couldn't imagine anything more delectable than freshly cooked food. Her fingers weighed the cloth purse that hung from her belt and contained her small hoard of coins. On her way to the stalls, a man stepped in her path and smiled, revealing a row of rotten teeth.

  "I see, mistress, you are yet unclaimed. Let me tell you, I have two hundred acres and am looking for a wife. Timothy Sower is my name, and I am a widower with four boys in need of a stepmother."

  "I am not seeking a husband." Hannah spoke sternly. "I am bound for Banham's Landing to join my sister."

  "Banham's Landing, you say?" He grinned lewdly. "Is your sister one of Banham's whores?"

  Hannah could only gape as he melted back into the throng.

  "You must forgive him for his words," a voice behind her said.

  She swung around to see an immense woman with a body like a proud galleon. Her skin was indigo-black. "The men come to sell their tobacco and buy a few nice things from the ship. There are so few Englishwomen here. When they see a girl like you, they act like fools."

  Hannah could not think what to say. She had never stood face to face with an African before, but something in the woman's gaze reminded her so much of Joan that she ached.

  "I am sure you are right," she said at last, dipping her head.

  ***

  "What meat is this?" she asked the man at the cookstall while he ladled thick brown stew onto a wooden trencher.

  "Venison," he said without ceremony, as though he were dishing out pigs' feet. Hannah shook her head in amazement. At home only the gentry were allowed to hunt deer and eat their meat.

  After she had finished the stew and was wiping her trencher with a hunk of coarse bread made from Indian maize, she realized that every man within twenty feet was staring at her. This time she tried not to let it unnerve her. She reminded herself that she was brand-new to their world, still unmarked by this country. She was fresh from the land most of them would never see again. How could they help but stare?

  ***

  As the sun crept toward the western hills, there seemed little point in remaining on shore. The auction had ended. The sailors had unloaded the goods for Anne Arundel Town and were ready to sail north up Chesapeake Bay at first light. How many days, she wondered, would it take them to reach Banham's Landing? Now that Elizabeth was gone, the ship was a lonely place. Crawling under the bedclothes, she couldn't wait for the voyage to be over.

  She had just dozed off when a sailor carrying a lantern awakened her.

  "Hannah Powers," he said, "two women have come to take Elizabeth Sharpe's place in your sleeping box." At that, he was gone, taking his light with him.

  One of the women, however, held a guttering candle. Her face above the unsteady flame was black. Raising herself on one elbow, Hannah recognized the woman she had spoken to earlier that day.

  "I am Lucy Mackett," said the candle bearer. "And this is Cassie." The face of a younger woman hovered over Lucy's broad shoulder. "We are free midwives bound for the Mearley Plantation."

  "I am Hannah Powers," she replied, her voice hoarse with sleep. "Bound for Banham's Landing."

  "You are the girl I saw before."

  "Yes."

  "Banham's Landing, you say? Your journey is longer than ours."

  How long? Hannah wanted to ask when Lucy and Cassie turned their attention to moving their things into the narrow space and spreading their blankets on the shared pallet. Lucy set her candle in the tin sconce, then began to undress. Shadows flitted across the rough walls.

  "You are midwives." It was too awkward to just lie there in silence as the two strange women prepared to bed down beside her. "Have you been to the Washbrook Plantation? It's upriver from the Banham Plantation. My sister bore a child ... almost two years ago. Her name is May."

  "I have never heard of the Washbrook Plantation," Lucy replied. "Cassie, you ever heard of it?"

  "No." Cassie's shadow was girlishly slender.

  "Good night to you," said Lucy, lowering her heavy body on the pallet. The sleeping box filled with the scent of dried herbs. Cassie blew out the candle
, then squeezed into the space between Lucy and Hannah.

  Rolling over to face the wall, Hannah tried to ease herself to sleep, but Lucy Mackett's words hung heavy in her mind. Her journey was far from being over. The waters of the Chesapeake swayed and surged beneath the ship as though she were still—and would always be—at sea.

  9. The Dark Green Place

  Hannah

  ANNE ARUNDEL TOWN fell behind, lost and forgotten as a dream upon waking. With each hour they sailed, the land grew wilder and stranger. It reminded Hannah of the stories her father used to tell her. Once Britain had been covered in forest. Centuries ago, before the Civil War, before Henry VIII and the Reformation, before the tall trees had been cut down to make ships, there had been a lost wilderness full of bear and wild boar.

  The ship sailed past harvested tobacco fields where the stripped earth stood out like a giant wound against the dense woods beyond. She sighted a group of black men burning harvest stubble. Although it was halfway into October, they worked shirtless, their backs glistening in the fire's heat. Their voices rose on the wind with the smoke as they sang in an unfamiliar language, their music so haunting that it made her shiver.

  Those men, she gathered, were not free like Lucy and Cassie. She turned as the two women walked toward her.

  "Soon we anchor at the Mearley Plantation," Lucy said when they joined her at the rail. "The ship only comes once a year, and when it comes, it is like Christmas."

  "Christmas?"

  "You will see for yourself," said Lucy. Cassie said nothing, only cracked a smile.

  The ship swung around a bend, revealing a plantation that reminded Hannah of a prosperous yeoman's farmstead at home. The two-story house had a steep-pitched roof and red shutters flanking gabled windows of real glass that glinted in the dazzling autumn light.