Elizabeth had Giles spade up a space about our house, and here she planted her hollyhocks, as well as some herbs and a few other pretties. Do they prosper, they will make the house look less like a square box rearing straight from the earth.
My fear of the Indians, who now stroll openly through our village, has been somewhat lulled by a treaty which was made between our men and a great chief named Massasoit. A few days following his first visit Samoset returned, and announced that this Massasoit and his men would have words with our people. There were nigh sixty of them, and they would not come into the settlement (praise heaven!) but stayed a short way off, where Edward Winslow was sent to talk with them. This he did, and there was a ceremonious exchange of gifts, and a little brandy and a great deal of food (most of it going from us to them and not t’other way about), and at last an agreement of peace was reached, which allows us all to breathe more freely, although I cannot find it in my heart to trust these savage heathens to the full! I asked Father to teach me to shoot one of his guns, but he roared back he would rather face ten Indians with bows and arrows than one female with a gun and a shaking hand, and he would have no part of it. Sometimes I wish I had been born a man!
May 1621 continued
From watching Priscilla and John casting eyes at each other for the past months I had felt sure they would soon be married, but now Captain Standish calls often upon Priscilla, who has been living with the Brewsters. We all see him march up to the doorway, looking like a small red-bearded rooster, for he grew so enamored of the beard he sprouted on board the “Mayflower” that he has never shaved it off. Most of the others have, including Father, because Elizabeth said she would as soon buss a billy goat as a man in a beard. The little Captain knocks sharply at the door, albeit in this mild weather it is rarely closed until the household sleeps, and then stands his musket neatly against the side of the house and enters for an hour’s courting. I could not see what Priscilla could be thinking of, till she and I were set to work together gathering early wild mint for drying, and I asked her straight out how it was with her and John.
“Perhaps I should not pry,” I said, “save that everyone has seen how you gaze at each other. It cannot be a secret.”
“Except to John,” Priscilla said. “I swear to you, Constance, that more than once I have been sure the great dear booby was about to ask me would I wed him, and I am sure, too, that everyone—save John—knows what my answer will be, but he shies away at the last moment like a horse on loose cobbles and mutters that the corn is growing well, or that he has built a new chest for Dr. Fuller, or some other startling item about which I care naught. I am in despair!”
“But Captain Standish—do you consider him?”
“As a husband? Oh, Con, I must consider someone! And the Captain—Myles—has been most courteous and kind.”
“But he is so much older than you, Prissy!”
“Not that much. I am close to twenty-one and Myles is but thirty-six.”
“Why, that’s my father’s age! He is too old for you, Pris—and John is just right!”
“That all may be true, but what am I to do if John does not ask me?”
“Has Captain Standish asked you?”
“No, but he will.” She sounded very gloomy.
“Mayhap not.”
“He will, never fear. And I must marry someone. It is not meet for me to live alone, and I cannot stay with the Brewsters forever—though they are kindness itself to me. Oh, Constance, it is such a puzzle!”
So Captain Standish called upon Priscilla in the evenings, and yet often I saw her walking with John Alden, and on some occasions she would see me, too, and throw me a droll look of helpless fury. And then, with no word to anyone, Edward Winslow and Susanna White presented themselves before Governor Bradford (I find it hard not to call him Will) to be married! It did not seem to me to be a union filled with love and romantic notions as I had always thought ’twould be, but Elizabeth says ’twas a very practical thing, since they were both widowed during the Sickness and Susanna has Resolved and little Peregrine to raise, and she and Master Winslow are of an age and most compatible in mind and thought. But still I think there should be more than that.
In any case this was the first marriage in our settlement, and it must have made Captain Standish feel that if it was not too soon after their bereavement for Master Winslow and Susanna, then it was not too soon for him either. Priscilla has told me what happened then, and I find it comical and yet a little sad, I know not why. Seems that when the brave Captain got right to the point of asking Priscilla’s hand he was no better at it than John, though he must have done it before or how could he have married poor Rose?
“So at last he decided to have someone speak for him,” Prissy said, “and who should the blind ninny light upon but John! I swear ’tis a wonder we look upon Myles to protect us from the savages, for I doubt he could tell one a span away! But John was his choice, and poor John came to me, washed and brushed and wretched and honorable, and asked would I wed with Myles!”
“What did you say, Pris? Whatever did you say?”
“For a moment I knew not what to say! If I said No, I might die a spinster for all the good it would do with John, and if I said Yes—but somehow I could not say Yes!”
“And so—?”
“And so I gathered my courage together and asked John if he was sure that was what he wanted to say, and he turned those great blue eyes on me like a bewildered child and said that was what he had been told to say, and I became so put out with his helplessness that I jabbed my fists onto my hips and stood glaring down at him and asked him why he was too much of a mollycoddle to speak for himself! Oh, Con, I felt like such a brazen wench!”
“And he did? At last?”
“He did. At last! And all as though he was much surprised that I should care for him, and prefer him to Myles! I swear to you, Con, ’tis a miracle that men ever catch themselves a wife!”
“But you are happy now, Prissy?”
“Oh, Constance, I would not think I could be so happy! John says as soon as his house is finished we will be wed. A month or two at most.”
So there will be another wedding in Plymouth, but I never realized how hard a lass must work to get the man she sets her heart on. I wonder will it be the same with me?
June 1621
It is June, and in the continued fair weather which has been granted us the planted fields show green and promising, and Elizabeth’s hollyhocks are fat with buds. I found clumps of violets in the woods a while ago, some of which I dug up and brought home, and these we have planted just within the hollyhocks, where they will bloom again next year. From Elizabeth’s amazing chest came also rosemary and sage and dill and other seeds, which are now prospering, so that we will soon be able to cut and hang them to dry beside the chimney place. In truth, with all the green of spring, and the planting that other women have done within the small, fenced-off gardens about their houses, our Street has become very pleasant to the eye.
Early in the month, the planting being completed and not requiring as much work from the men as before, Governor Bradford thought it wise to send some representatives to visit Massasoit, both to tighten the peace and friendship which has existed between the Indians and us (and pray God it may continue!) and to find out more about the other tribes that inhabit this area, even though we have seen little of them. For this task the Governor chose Father and Edward Winslow. Father, of course, was most pleased at the distinction and spent an entire day in cleaning and brightening his boots and clothes so that he might show to advantage and do the settlers honor. I should not have thought that Master Winslow would have been so ready to leave his wife, for he and Susanna have been wed but a month, but Elizabeth tells me that I am filled with female notions about love and marriage, and I suppose she is right, since I know little of either. In any case, Master Winslow seemed as eager as Father—wife