And then one night I saw Father come into the Common House, carrying little ’Maris. He handed the child to Elizabeth, and together they stood gazing down at her tiny little face. I tried to go to them, and something stopped me—they were so alone with her. Elizabeth sat the night holding the babe, rocking her gently and crooning songs without words. All the next day Damaris seemed to sleep, though she turned restlessly from one side to the other, fretting in small unknowing sounds. Elizabeth went back to nursing the others, stopping by ’Maris’ small pallet each time she passed, kneeling for a moment, her hand caressing the child’s hair and her flushed face. I sat with her for a while, bathing her with cool water, trying to ease the fever. Once she opened her great dark eyes and looked at me and smiled a little, and then started to cry weakly, so that Elizabeth came back to her.
Sometime in the night I stretched myself on a bench to sleep briefly, and woke a short time later to see Elizabeth and Father together before the fire. Father was taking Damaris from Elizabeth’s arms. As he walked slowly out of the Common House, carrying his tiny daughter, I saw the tears that streamed from his eyes and heard the dreadful sound of a man sobbing. Elizabeth stood watching them go, one hand against her throat. She made no noise, not even when I went to her and held her in both my arms.
And the days and the nights go on, and the sick are brought in, and the dead are carried out. Mary Allerton died, too weak after bearing a stillborn son to withstand the Sickness. And the whole Tinker family died, and Degory Priest died, and Mary Chilton’s parents died, and John Goodman and Thomas Rogers and Richard Gardiner died, and Francis Eaton’s wife Sarah died, and John Crackston and John Rigdale and Thomas Williams died, and Anne and Edward Tilley died, and John and Bridget Tilley died, and Jasper Moore and his sister Ellen died, and John Hooke and Robert Carter died . . .
Dr. Fuller said today he thinks the Sickness is ebbing, that fewer people are falling ill. A few or many—what does it matter? Soon there will be none of us left.
And who will bury the gravediggers?
March 1621
And then one morning, just last week, I opened the door of the Common House to look at the day, and it was spring. The air was warm and soft, but with the salty smell that is always here, and I could hear a thousand birds all talking at once in the trees! Priscilla Mullins sat on a rock below me, near the shore, and she was talking to John Alden. He stood like a tall ghost—pasty white and weakened from the Sickness, but standing! He’s going to get well, I thought suddenly. He’s not going to die!
I looked around as someone touched my shoulder gently, and Will Bradford stood there, one hand against the doorframe to steady himself. “You’re up!” I said, like a ninny. “Ought you to be? Are you strong enough?”
He smiled his very slow smile. “I am all right, Constance. Weak, shaky, and badly in need of a shave—but all right.”
I looked at him and knew it was true. They were beginning to recover. Those who were left were sitting up, or trying their weak legs in a few shaking steps—but they were getting well! Elizabeth came and stood beside me, breathing in the freshness of the morning.
“They’re getting well,” I said. “I don’t think any more are going to die!”
“I have felt the same thing. Pray God we are right!”
Father came toward the Common House, his feet stepping with their old strength on the dirt path. He stopped in front of us, and stood looking at his wife. Elizabeth’s sleeves were rolled up, her hair was an uncombed sight, her dress was reeking with filth. Her face was smudged and drawn and shadowed, and yet her eyes held a peace, a look of ease I had not seen in weeks. Father stared at her, seeing all I saw, and then he grinned.
“Elizabeth!” he said solemnly. “My beautiful Elizabeth!” And then, like fools, the two of them stood and laughed. Father put his arm about her shoulders and pulled her against him and kissed her, a great smacking kiss, and then he slapped her bottom.
“Come home, lass,” he roared at her. “There’s no one needs you now as much as I do.”
And with his arm still around her, they walked down the short lane from the Common House and up the hill. I watched them go, and Will Bradford, still standing beside me, watched them too. From somewhere we heard the sound of hammers and the pull of a saw through wood.
“Plymouth is a-building, Constance,” Will said. “Its people are getting well, and houses are rearing their walls, and the spring is come. God is still with us.”
But of the one hundred and two people who sailed from England, fifty-one are dead.
March 1621 Continued
My bracelet, my precious golden bangle that Father gave me before we sailed, is gone! I thought I would keep it always as a part of home, but ’twas my own doing that I have it no longer, and I have no one to blame but myself, and the silly impulses that at odd times beset me. But before I set down here why I no longer have my keepsake (Elizabeth says people do forget things, and I never want to forget this), I had best mention how the days have gone.
After the Sickness was over I thought I should never get enough sleep, nor feel myself truly clean again. But after two long nights of uninterrupted rest (I even slept through Father’s fearsome snoring) and nigh a dozen washings, I appear to be as before.
Our house is now quite finished, thanks to Ted Dotey and Ted Leister, whom Father calls his Two Teds, but compared to the house we left in London, this one is a poor place. There is but one room, of fair size, its walls of closely fitted boards, the first dirt floor now covered with thick planks. A smooth-cut beam runs flat around the walls about as high as my shoulder, holding the boards tight and acting as a shelf for our trenchers and few platters, our tankards and our various small implements. The chimney place in the back wall is large and built of stones, and it gives us a good blaze. Father says the danger of fire from sparks lighting on the thatched roof is great, but for the present thatch makes the quickest and easiest roofing. The three small windows, one beside the door which opens south upon the Street, and one each in the east and west walls, have nothing better than oiled paper in them, which lets in a murky light when the sliding shutters are open. A ladder runs up the wall to the loft above where the Two Teds sleep.
The furniture is little more than the few pieces Father and Elizabeth brought with them—their bedstead, a cradle for Oceanus, the big chair Father always sits in, a great carved chest, and Elizabeth’s small box. Other than that there are just the pallets for Giles and the Two Teds and me, stools for each of us, a trestle board that the Teds made, and pegs pounded into the wall for our clothing. In truth, I would be ashamed of living in such a place were it not that here in Plymouth there is no house any better. Giles finds it quite acceptable, but he likes everything about America as much as I hate it all.
I do not like the house. I do not like Plymouth, I do not like America, and there’s an end to it! Who would want to live in a country where savages watch us covertly from the trees, never showing themselves save in quick glimpses of heathenish dark skin as they slip away? Who would want to live where an Indian arrow can strike death from the forest with no warning sound? Who would want to live in a tiny Colony, helpless against any determined Indian attack? Before the Sickness there might have been a chance to fight them off, but not now. Even after what has happened, and after what I did with my bracelet, I know that this is true. There are far more Indians here than there are Englishmen!
But I was telling of our house. Most of the others are housed now too, with only a few of the unmarried men living together in the Common House. Since the Sickness there are but four married couples left to be the heads of families: the Brewsters, the Carvers, the Billingtons, and Father and Elizabeth. Of the others, the widowed and the orphaned, some have their own homes, and the rest have been taken into the various households.
The weather has been mild and already the men are beginning to turn the earth for planting, though they must first clear away the rocks and trees. There is much for everyone to do, and Governor Carver