Chesapeake

  “She’s my mother.”

  Now it was Paul’s turn to fall silent. He gaped at his brother as if Ralph had profaned some precious icon, and found no words to express his astonishment. “Yes,” the priest continued, “Meg Shipton. I often wondered ...”

  Paul could not comprehend the vast human complication uncovered by this chance meeting, and when his brother tried to explain—the selling of wives, the abandonments, the lonely years on Devon, the escapes, the courage of their mother and the steadfastness of their father—he threw up his hands. It was monstrous, and the longer he thought about its complexities the angrier he became. As a doctor, he was familiar with specific situations and had learned to counteract them as best he could; behavior like Mrs. Maynard’s was insufferable and he would not tolerate it.

  Leaving Ralph still dazed in the ketch, he stormed back to the counselor’s house and demanded to see husband and wife. “I want a signed release for Timothy Turlock,” he shouted at Maynard. “And I want you to talk with my brother like a decent Christian,” he told Mrs. Maynard.

  “Young man—”

  “And if you refuse, I shall inform everyone in Jamestown and all Virginia.”

  The Maynards were uncertain as to what this ultimatum covered, the release or the visitation, and the counselor tried to utter some witticism, but Paul reached swiftly out and grabbed his wrist. “You have one minute, sir, to send for my brother down there on the boat. One minute.”

  Mr. Maynard now awoke to the fact that he had on his hands a dangerous type, and he dispatched a slave to fetch the priest. In the interval he wrote out a statement releasing Timothy Turlock from his indenture and excusing him for misconduct against his master. Then Ralph appeared, disheveled and looking like no priest.

  “Mrs. Maynard,” Paul said, “this is your son Ralph.”

  “I am pleased to see you back from Rome,” she said icily.

  It was a miserable scene, with no one prepared to make a sensible comment, and after several futile attempts to reconcile mother and son, Paul became enraged. “God damn you both ...”

  “You could have your tongue branded for blasphemy,” Maynard warned.

  “Damn you both!” he repeated, and the brothers left.

  On the long, bewildering days of the sail back to Devon, Ralph sat slumped in the ketch, saying nothing, staring at the dark waters. After several useless attempts to console him, Paul left him alone, but on the night before reaching the island, when sleep was fitful, he thought he heard a click and rushed aft to find Ralph preparing to blow out his brains.

  “Ralph,” he cried in terror, for what the young priest proposed was a fearful sin against humanity and the Holy Ghost: a suicide. Wresting the pistol from him, Paul slammed him backward, slapped his face and cursed him.

  Ralph said nothing, seemed hardly to have known what happened, but the pistol was hidden from him. And when the ketch landed, and the brothers went ashore, they moved like old men with secrets too wretched to share. They could not tell their mother of the indecent scene with Meg Shipton, for that would pain her, nor could they share the incident with Henry, for he, too, had never been told of Ralph’s parentage. All they could do was show the document freeing Turlock, and when Henry suggested that they deliver it to the marshes as proof of their willingness to help the fugitive, they could show no interest in either Turlock or his reprieve.

  It was now that Father Steed entered upon the great years of his ministry to the Eastern Shore, traveling alone to the most dangerous parts of the peninsula, living fearlessly with Indians and renegades, performing marriages and christenings in the most unlikely spots, and at rare intervals consecrating some hidden room in a sprawling house to serve as chapel. There would never be many Catholics on the Eastern Shore, that was the religion of towns across the bay, but the ones who did brave the wilderness revered Father Steed as their conscience and their hope.

  The lines in his face deepened. He grew careless of dress. And when it was proposed that because of his piety he move to St. Mary’s City to serve the notable families there, he begged to be excused. “I am at home in the back rivers,” he said—and it was along these rivers he traveled.

  What was there about a marsh which gave it the power to enthrall a man? When Timothy Turlock received proof that he would not be hauled back to Jamestown for hanging and that his tenure of the marsh was secure, he experienced a resurgence of spirit that no one acquainted with his thieving ways would have credited.

  “Tcib!” he shouted as the Steed ketch departed. “We’re safe.” Dancing a jig, he grabbed his sons, one under each arm, and ran down to where the marsh began. Pointing with his unshaven chin at the reeds and the twisted channels, he cried, “Never lose it!”

  In his appreciation of the marsh Turlock had advanced somewhat from the early days when he had seen it merely as a hiding place for animals as well as himself. Now he saw it as an empire, a reservoir of considerable richness populated by larger animals and tastier fish. He did not bother to differentiate the rushes and the various kinds of minute inedible crabs, nor did he have the knowledge to comprehend how the contrasting segments of life fitted together, each supporting the other; that complicated awareness would not come in his century. But what he could understand was that the marsh constituted a kind of outlaw state from which he could thumb his nose at the Steeds and any others who sought to enslave him in their ordered ways.

  Once safe within its boundaries he was emperor. He had built himself a small rowboat, no more leakproof than the shallop he had helped build for Janney, and with his toes in the water that seeped through the cracks, he loved to creep down the hidden waterways that cut the marsh into principalities; as he progressed from one hummock to the next he watched the larger forms of life.

  Deer were common, and he refrained from gunning them within the marsh, as if he recognized the right of animals to find sanctuary as well as he; his deer he shot inland among the trees. He grew familiar with muskrats, too, and watched where they built their conical lodges.

  He was especially fond of the gaudy-colored turtle; it was not good for eating like the terrapin he caught whenever possible, and perhaps it was this uselessness that earned the slow-footed animal a particular place in his affection, for he often suspected that he, too, was good for nothing. He liked the songs of the frogs and laughed when his boys argued that the noises they uttered must be coming from some heavy bird.

  “Frogs,” he told them, and not until he had trapped some and shown them how the moist creatures made their provocative sound would the boys believe. He felt a special identification with the osprey that swept in to filch fish the way he crept to steal; this was a fine bird, fiery and resolute, and sometimes when he saw it darting over the tips of the marsh grass he felt that he would like to be such a bird.

  “Oh!” he cried to the boys. “Watch him dive!” And he was gratified whenever the osprey flew off with a struggling fish.

  The lesser life which kept the marsh viable he rarely saw, and its relation to the grasses he did not understand. Snails and jellyfish were none of his concern, but there was one creature that never failed to ignite his imagination: the great goose that came in October to fill the sky and command the streams. This was the symbol of the marsh’s grandeur, the promise of its bounty.

  As the days of summer shortened he would tell his boys, “Some day now,” and each morning he would test the wind, and he could guess within two days of when the great birds would come sailing in, their raucous voices filling the air with protest as they argued where to land, and when they finally agreed upon his marsh he would run out as if to embrace them, for they shared this sanctuary with him, and like the deer, they were safe from his gun so long as they stayed here.

  Once, caught up with emotion at the return of the birds, he flung his arms skyward as they wheeled in. “Where were you?” he cried, but it was the boys who heard him, not the geese, and he was embarrassed that they should have seen him making such a fool of himself. He
ducked into his leaky boat and rowed furiously into the remote waterways where cat-o’-nine-tails flourished, and there he found the new arrivals feeding and watched them through the chilly day.

  In these years, and far into the future, the entire Chesapeake watershed contained only two established villages, and even these provided services more governmental than economic. Jamestown served as the capital of Virginia, St. Mary’s City as the capital of Maryland, but as soon as more sensible locations were found—Williamsburg and Annapolis—the original villages practically vanished, proving that they had served no commercial function.

  On the Eastern Shore the condition was even more pronounced, and there would be no town or village until the close of the century; even famous settlements like Oxford, Cambridge and Easton would not come till late, and this was understandable, for it was only at the ends of the innumerable peninsulas that pioneers settled. Since the farmers who occupied these headlands were largely self-sufficient, they felt no need for a trading center, nor could they have reached one by road if it had existed, for it was impossible to link the various peninsulas by trails, which would have had to traverse swamps, deep woods and broad creeks. Each family lived to itself.

  But wherever men accumulate, towns begin mysteriously to form, and as early as 1650 the first tentative seeds of a community along the Choptank were being sown. Hunters and other drifters continued to prize the facilities they found at the ruins of the Indian village of Patamoke, where the splendid harbor provided access to the bay and protection from storms. Sometimes the site would be occupied four years in a row, then lie vacant for three. In some years only one casual hunter would stop by in early November, hunting geese, but it was known along the Eastern Shore as a place where anyone in extremity could probably find bread or a few ounces of gunpowder.

  The Steeds watched carefully what happened at the old Indian site, for as good merchants they suspected that trade might one day develop there, and they intended to control it. Twice Henry Steed sailed into the harbor to ascertain whether the time was ripe for opening some kind of trading post, and it was clear to him that persons taking up residence on the peninsulas would find it easier to sail to some central point than to come all the way to Devon Island.

  “For the present there aren’t enough people to justify a post,” he told his brothers, “but soon there will be.” What he did instead of opening a store proved his acuity: “Paul, you must cross the bay and talk with the governor.” And when the talks were concluded, the Steeds had patents giving them title to the harbor and all the spacious lands surrounding it.

  “Now,” Henry told the family, “if anything does develop, we’ll be in an excellent position.”

  But no matter how extensive the Steed holdings became, Mrs. Steed could not rest easy. In 1638 she had repelled Simon Janney’s claim against the northern fields, but she had not legally disposed of it, and now she warned her sons, “Settle with Janney before he learns that we are prospering.” So once again Henry and Paul sailed the ketch to Jamestown, taking with them a remarkable cargo. Cash money was still murderously scarce, and none could recall when actual coins had circulated along the Choptank, for the good reason that Henry Steed had hidden every one that came his way. Secretly he had accumulated a hoard of Spanish and French pieces, plus a few shillings, and it was these he intended using as bait with Janney.

  When they reached Jamestown they learned that the tough little countryman still occupied his mean farm up-river, so they steered their ketch to his wharf, but it was in such sad condition that they feared tying up to it. Anchoring in the stream, they rowed ashore and went to the hovel in which Janney, his toothless wife and their malnourished daughter lived. When Henry saw their condition he thought: The mention of hard coinage will speed this negotiation. But Janney proved an astute trader.

  “I ought to know the fields, seein’ they’re mine.”

  “I believe they’re held in my father’s name.”

  “Use makes title.”

  “There may be something to what you say.”

  “Especially if I have it in writin’.”

  “You do?” Henry asked cautiously.

  “Letters,” Janney said, looking to his wife for confirmation.

  “Letters prove nothing,” Henry said. “You know I read law.”

  “Then you’ll know what a contract is,” Janney said.

  For about an hour they parried in this manner, until Paul grew restless. “I don’t believe Mr. Janney has any proof,” he said peremptorily.

  “But Henry believes. Don’t you, Henry?”

  “I would judge that you have some shadowy claim,” Henry conceded. “Difficult to prove, but perhaps strong enough to cause us embarrassment in court.”

  “Especially in a Virginia court.”

  “I propose we discharge that claim. Now.”

  “With what?” Janney asked.

  “With money. With a substantial number of coins.”

  He had stressed the fact of coins in order to impress Janney with the possibility of his getting hold of real money, but he was not prepared for Janney’s next step. The canny farmer consulted visually with his wife and daughter; they nodded; he loosened a board in the floor and produced from beneath it a large clay pot, from which he poured onto the wooden table a hoard of European coinage more than twice as large as the one Henry Steed had accumulated. As he fingered the coins, lovingly and with pride, he said, “We’re planning to buy a place on the Rappahannock. Have been for some years. Now, if you’re serious about clearing up your title, and you should be ...” He allowed his coins to clink.

  “How much do you want?” Henry asked coldly.

  “The matter comes down to my signing your papers, don’t it?”

  “In part.”

  “I’ll sign and my wife will make her mark and my daughter Jennifer will sign. You’ll be forever clear of us”—he hesitated, and no one breathed—“if you add substantially to our coins.”

  Without hesitation Henry Steed took his purse by one bottom corner, turned it upside down and allowed all its contents to pour onto the table. “I think that’s substantial.”

  “I think so too,” Janney said, and the quitclaim was signed.

  On the trip home Paul said admiringly, “That was daring,” and Henry said, “Not if you knew I kept half our coins sewed along the waist of my trousers.” Then he became reflective. “The important thing is that our patents are now without blemish, and, Paul, we must keep them that way. No mortgages, no loans, and above all, dear brother, no borrowing from Fithian. Promise me that you will never order from London one item you can’t pay for. Marcus Fithian’s the most honest man I know. I trust him with every leaf of our tobacco, and he gives me honest count, but for the love of God, never fall into his debt.”

  He had met Fithian at the Inns of Court; the Englishman was one year older and many years wiser. The descendant of a family that had always specialized in financing trade, his ancestors had known the Fuggers and the Medici and had rarely been worsted by either. The young men had met in 1636, and for five months young Fithian had pumped Henry for knowledge of the colonies; he was pleased to hear that Henry had stopped in Boston on his way to London and had observed for himself the prosperity of that town, but Henry kept repeating, “The true fortunes are to be made along the rivers of Virginia.” To test this thesis, Fithian had made a tedious journey in a tobacco ship to the York and the Potomac and had seen at once the chances for an industrial association that would profit both the remote planter in the colonies and the factor in London.

  He was never avaricious, but four great plantations had already fallen into his hands because their undisciplined owners ordered more from London than they could pay for with the tobacco they shipped from Virginia. Fithian did nothing criminal, or even suspicious; he merely filled orders and kept meticulous balances, and when the former pushed the latter into debits, he foreclosed. He never tried to run a plantation himself; he knew he was unqualified for tha
t exacting task: “I wouldn’t know the value of a single slave, nor a field of unripe weed.”

  What he did, once he gained title, was send an underling to the colonies to seek out the best farmer available and sell him the land at great discount, trusting to keep that man’s accounts for the next fifty years. It was in furtherance of this design that in 1651 he wrote to his friend Henry Steed:

  My cousin Lennox spent three weeks on your rivers and advises me that the farmer Simon Janney is hard-working, trustworthy and exceptionally well informed on tobacco. Do you concur? I have lately come into possession of a large plantation on the left bank of the Rappahannock which Lennox assures me is capable of cultivation, should it pass into the hands of the right owner. I have in mind to sell it to Janney at a price well below the market in hopes he can establish himself. Please instruct me by the captain of this ship. Can he pay a reasonable sum? Will he pay? Can he make land yield a profit?

  To each of these questions Steed returned a strong affirmative, telling Paul as he did so, “Where land is concerned, Simon Janney is almost as trustworthy as a Steed,” and he felt sure that the Rappahannock plantation was passing into excellent hands.

  But repeatedly he returned to his basic thesis, which he preached to his mother and his brothers: “Never borrow a farthing from London.” In all other respects they trusted their unseen partner: he sent them the desired cloth from Flanders, or crystal from Bohemia, or books from London. He arranged for their travel, kept their credits in the proper banks, and consistently knew more about their affairs than they. He was the absent partner at their feasts, the most trusted member of their acquaintances. They worked and ate on a river on the Eastern Shore, but spiritually they lived in London, thanks to the responsibility and integrity of Marcus Fithian.

  There were other problems which could not be avoided. The Nanticoke Indians had behaved circumspectly when the first white men invaded their ancient territories, and had withdrawn, allowing the invaders a free hand in picking up the lesser sites along the southern rivers, and there had been no battles. But when additional invaders kept crossing the bay and pushing farther and farther up the rivers to appropriate really fine hunting lands, the pressure became unbearable.