A Roll of the Bones Read online

  Breakwater Books

  P.O. Box 2188, St. John’s, NL, Canada, A1C 6E6

  www.breakwaterbooks.com

  Copyright © 2019 Trudy J. Morgan-Cole

  ISBN 978-1-55081-798-0

  Cover painting: detail of Girl Chopping Onions, oil on panel, 20.8 x 16.9 cm, 1646, by Gerrit Dou. Royal Collection Trust, UK.

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from Library and Archives Canada.

  We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada and the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador through the Department of Tourism, Culture, Industry and Innovation for our publishing activities.

  Printed and bound in Canada.

  Breakwater Books is committed to choosing papers and materials for our books that help to protect our environment. To this end, this book is printed on a recycled paper that is certified by the Forest Stewardship Council®.

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  ONE A Match is Contracted

  TWO A Marriage is Solemnized

  THREE A Journey is Purposed

  CHAPTER FOUR A Judgement is Carried Out

  CHAPTER FIVE A Small Flame is Extinguished

  CHAPTER SIX The Winter is Ended and Spring Has Come

  CHAPTER SEVEN A Letter is Read

  CHAPTER EIGHT Preparations are Made for a Journey

  CHAPTER NINE A Parcel of Females is Delivered

  CHAPTER TEN An Attack is Anticipated

  CHAPTER ELEVEN A Proposal is Made

  CHAPTER TWELVE The Indeavour is Launched

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN A Dalliance is Begun

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN A Cold Hand is Laid Upon the Colony

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN An Occasion of Hope

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN A New Beginning is Celebrated

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN A Second Meeting is Thwarted

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN A Storm Approaches

  CHAPTER NINETEEN A Temptation is Presented

  CHAPTER TWENTY An Accusation Is Made

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE A Bargain is Struck

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO A Hasty Decision is Made

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE A New Journey is Begun

  Afterword

  Author’s Note

  THIS BOOK IS A WORK OF FICTION, BUILT UPON THE REAL HISTORY of the Cupids Cove colony (also known as Cuper’s Cove, or simply Cupids) planted in Newfoundland in 1610 by John Guy. Readers who are curious to know where I have altered or invented pieces of the story that deviate from recorded history may wish to check the Afterword for more information.

  Throughout the novel, I have modernized dating, with the new year beginning in January, as ours does, rather than in March, as English people at that time would have reckoned it.

  The epigraph for the book, and those at the head of each chapter, are taken from Robert Hayman’s Quodlibets, published in 1628—the first book written in Newfoundland.

  The Air, in Newfound-Land is wholesome, good;

  The Fire, as sweet as any made of wood;

  The Waters, very rich, both salt and fresh;

  The Earth more rich, you know it is no less.

  Where all are good, Fire, Water, Earth, and Air,

  What man made of these four would not live there?

  —from Quodlibets: Lately Come Over from New Britaniola,

  Old Newfoundland, Robert Hayman, 1628

  ONE

  A Match is Contracted

  First grows the Tree,

  and then the Leaves do grow;

  These two must spring

  before the fruit can show.

  BRISTOL

  SUMMER 1609

  ON THE DAY IT BEGAN—THE DAY THAT PICKED UP THEIR three lives like a child picking up stones from the path, shook them hard, and laid them down in an entirely different road—Nancy was the first of the three to wake. And since Nancy’s journey was, of the three of them, to be the longest and strangest, you might reckon it was Fate’s touch that wakened her at the same time dawn was streaking through the shutters, just before St. Stephen’s bell chimed five of the clock.

  In truth, she woke early because she needed to use the chamber pot.

  Rolling out of the bed she shared with her mistress Kathryn, Nancy pulled the pot from underneath the bed. After squatting over it, she took her russet kirtle from a peg on the wall and dived back inside the warmth of the bed curtains where Kathryn was gently snoring. Nancy stripped off her nightdress, put on a clean shift, kirtle, and apron, braided her hair and tucked it up under her coif, before getting out of bed to take the chamber pot downstairs.

  The large upstairs chamber held two beds—one for the children, and one that Kathryn and Nancy shared. The master and mistress’s bed, in the inner chamber, was already empty at this hour. From the children’s bed, Nancy heard Lily talking to herself in a high-pitched singsong; little Edward must still be asleep. The oldest boy, John, slept downstairs with the apprentices. Also downstairs, to keep an eye on the boys and the fire, was Tibby, the maid.

  So while the room upstairs was still quiet but for Lily’s song, the hall downstairs already stirred with life. The fire was crackling after being banked for the night; Master Gale and the boys broke their fast at the table, and Aunt Tibby kneaded the morning’s bread loaves while Mistress Gale cut slices of cheese from a big wheel in the centre of the table.

  “All right, lads, Ned’s gone for water, and we need wood brought in before you start work, so step lively,” Mistress Gale called to the apprentices as they finished their pottage. The lads headed towards the door just as Aunt Tib said, “Ah, good morning, love, you’re up,” to Nancy, and Mistress Gale added, “Get yourself something to eat now, Nancy, and then go haul my daughter out of the sheets—she cannot sleep late, today of all days. Johnny, take that pot from Nan and go dump it in the privy.”

  “No, I’ll go.” Nancy slipped through the door out into the cool morning and crossed to the privy at the back of the yard. All around, from other houses, she heard the same sounds of waking as she heard in her own: householders, servants, and apprentices rising to chop wood and haul water, empty slop buckets, and begin cooking the day’s food, as the craftsmen and housewives of St. Stephen’s parish began another day.

  A busy day, for the Gale household. Master Gale and his wife were entertaining guests to supper, which meant a larger and finer meal than usual. Nicholas Guy, the shoemaker, was coming to dine, and bringing his father and sister with him. Like as not he would make an offer today for Mistress Kathryn’s hand in marriage, and everything about the house and on the table must be at its best. Nancy and Kathryn were to go to the fishmonger’s, while Mistress Gale and Aunt Tib dressed and cooked the capons and goose.

  Busy with plans for the day, Nancy did not see Ned Perry coming into the yard with two water buckets until he nearly ran into her. “Have a care, you great oaf,” she said, sweeping past him. “You could have had my kirtle soaked through.”

  “Oh, fine words from a woman who’s carrying a chamber pot and not looking where she’s going! I’d have been the worse off in that encounter,” the rascal shot back. In faith, the apprentices were a nuisance, and Ned was the worst of them, Nancy thought. He and she were of an age; he’d come to his apprenticeship at fourteen. He was learning
the stonemason’s trade when she had been learning to brew ale and do fine needlework and make simple remedies from herbs. Since the day he came into the house, he had made it his mission to torment and tease her.

  Nancy had lived in the Gale household since she was four years old, when the plague had taken both her father and mother in a single week. She remembered neither of them: the only family she knew was Aunt Tib, her mother’s sister. Master and Mistress Gale had not turned away their serving girl’s orphaned niece, but had shown her the rare kindness of keeping the child and letting Nancy grow up as a companion to their daughter Kathryn, training her so she could find her own place in service someday.

  At eighteen, Nancy ought to have found that place by now. A household like the Gales’, with four children and as many apprentices, neither needed nor could afford two servants. But Nancy and Kathryn had grown up as close as sisters, and every time the subject of Nancy going to service in another house had been raised, her young mistress had refused to hear of it.

  Now, with an offer of marriage from Master Guy, that would all change. When Kathryn went to a household of her own, there would be less need than ever for Nancy here at the Gale house. Whatever Kathryn Gale’s future might hold after today, Nancy’s world was bound to be turned head over heels.

  But there was nothing to be done about that—nothing Nancy could do by fretting, at any rate. Finished with the privy, she went back into the kitchen, laid down the empty chamber pot by the door, and helped herself to breakfast.

  ANOTHER CHILLY SPRING MORNING, ANOTHER TRIP DOWN TO THE water pipe on the quay, and another day of Nancy Ellis being a saucy minx. Nothing new under Ned Perry’s sun.

  Back in the kitchen with the buckets of water, he stole a piece of cheese off Nancy’s plate. “Get your own breakfast and keep your hands off of mine, you knave,” she said, slapping his fingers away.

  “Mistress Tibby, Nancy hit me!” he cried. He had already eaten a bowl of pottage, but now put a couple more slices of cheese—not Nancy’s—on top of a slab of yesterday’s rye bread.

  The maid laughed but did not look up from the dough she was kneading. “As if I’ve not got my hands full with the youngsters, the two of you behaving like children again.”

  “’Tis not the two of us, only Ned. I’ve bigger fish to fry than quarrelling with the likes of him,” Nancy told her aunt.

  For a moment all three of them—Ned, Nancy, and Mistress Tibby—shared a smile. It seemed long years ago when Ned was a new apprentice, when teasing the girls sometimes earned him a cuff on the ear. Mistress Tibby made no favourite of her niece; she was as quick to chide Nancy as she was one of the boys. Tibby’s main concern was always to keep everyone in their proper place: she would let Ned away with saying things to Nancy that, if he said them to Kathryn Gale, would earn him a slap. Inseparable as the two girls were, he was quickly taught the difference in their stations and the things he might say to one but not to the other.

  “Right then, no time for dallying,” said Mistress Gale, pulling on her cloak. “I’m off to the butcher’s for mutton. Nancy, you and Kathryn go to the fishmonger’s as soon as ever you can, and Tibby, we will have everything here well before noon so we can begin cooking. Supper will be at five.”

  “And we’d best get to work, lads,” said Master Gale, rounding up the apprentices and his son John. They were laying stone and carving a frieze for Sir John Young’s banqueting hall up on the hill.

  Ned bent his head close to Nancy’s. “So, will Master Guy make his offer today, do you think?”

  “’Tis no business of yours, is it? You will go on cutting and laying stone whether Mistress Kathryn is married or no.” She stood up from the table, brushing crumbs off her apron and putting cheese, bread, and a slice of cold pork pie on a trencher for Kathryn, then headed towards the narrow staircase that led up to the sleeping chamber.

  Ned quickly banished from his mind an image of the young mistress sitting up in bed, her curls no doubt loose and tumbled about her rosy face, her nightdress a little agape at the neck—. No. Hardly the thought to be entertaining on the day when a man was coming round to make an offer for Mistress Kathryn’s hand in marriage.

  BEHIND THE BED CURTAINS, KATHRYN GALE LAY HALF-AWAKE, listening to the household stir around her. Nancy’s side of the bed was still warm; she was always out of bed at least an hour before Kathryn.

  I ought to be up and about. There was a deal of work to do today, and while her chief concern was what to wear and how to dress her hair so she would look well for Master Guy, her mother had other expectations. There was food to be cooked, the house to be cleaned, everything to be put in readiness for the grandest supper the stonemason’s household could produce.

  Now she heard her younger brother and sister rolling out of their bed and complaining about the cold. Now their small feet thundering across the floor. Kathryn listened to it all drowsily, the weave and shift of their voices, the rise and fall of her family’s noises from the big room below. Everyone down in the hall to break their fast, and one set of steps, light and sure, coming the other way.

  Nan twitched the bed curtains open. “Oh good, you are awake. Here.” She laid the tray down beside Kathryn without ceremony. Every morning for—how many years? Anyone would think you were a lord’s daughter with your own lady’s maid, Kathryn’s mother said. But she did not order Nan to stop bringing Kathryn’s breakfast to her. Kathryn’s mother could have ordered Nancy to do any number of things; she could have sent her away, years ago, to serve in another household. A household where she would know her place, where she would cook and scrub and not have the cheek to say to her mistress, “Eat that now, and get dressed; of all days you can’t slug abed today.”

  “I know,” Kathryn said, tucking into the pie. “I have been thinking on my gown. Are you quite sure—”

  “That your old blue kersey shows your bosom to better advantage than the new green one? I am, and what’s more, you know in your heart that I’m right.” Nancy sat down on the edge of the bed. “Hair, gown—everything is decided, and there’ll be nothing gained by changing any of it now. Your mother wants us to go and buy fish.”

  “Mama said the blue gown was more becoming, but only you would tell me it makes my bosom look better.”

  “’Tis naught but the truth, my Kat.”

  “What would I do without you, my Nan?”

  Nancy—who would never have dared call Kathryn her pet name in front of any of the rest of the household—stood up quite suddenly and busied herself with the bedclothes, although she could hardly make the bed with Kathryn still sitting up in it. “Well, mayhap you’ll find out, when you marry Master Guy.”

  “Never! I’ll not go to any man’s house without my Nan—you know that. I’ve always said.”

  “What you say may not matter, once you have a husband.”

  “I’ll tell him before I ever accept his offer. I’ll say, ‘Master Guy, my father will talk to you about my marriage portion, but I have one request that may as well be chiselled in stone. My Nancy comes with me, or I come not at all.’ How think you he’ll like that?”

  “He will think you a bold minx, to be making such demands.”

  Dressed and heading out into the bustling streets with Nancy by her side, Kathryn turned that phrase over in her mind. A bold minx. Not, perhaps, what she should aspire to as she prepared to receive an offer of marriage. A virtuous maid. A good wife. But perhaps it would not hurt if she had a little of the bold minx about her. Some men liked a little boldness in a wife.

  Passing an innyard on the way to the market, the girls saw a stage being hammered into place beneath a brightly coloured tent. “Oh look, Nan! The players have come to town! I wonder what play they’ll do.”

  Nancy took hold of Kathryn’s elbow, steering her past the inn. “Whatever it may be, you’ll have no time to go seeing plays tonight.”

  “Indeed not. Tonight I shall be the heroine of my own romance.”

  “You and your romances!” I
n truth, both girls enjoyed going to see the players when they came to Bristol, or listening to tales Kathryn’s mother told by the fire at night. But Nancy always kept her feet firmly planted on the ground. Kathryn, for her part, liked to imagine herself as Helen of Troy or some other famous beauty men would fight and die for.

  “You needn’t remind me that life is no romance,” she said now, following Nancy’s lead past the stage and towards the fish market. “But I dare to hope at least that I will like him and…well, that he will be fond of me. Papa won’t make me marry a man I don’t like—he’s always promised that—but how am I to know until we’re wedded?”

  “I doubt you can know. That is why I intend to steer clear of the whole business.”

  Kathryn laughed. She’d given up long ago trying to change Nancy’s mind about marriage. Nancy had a good example before her in her aunt. They had all thought, once, that when Tibby left to marry, Nancy could step into her place, but Tibby had turned down the few offers she had had. She had kept company with a carpenter’s journeyman for a time, but in the end she had sent him packing and given no reason save that she was better off as she was.

  “I’m no fool,” Kathryn insisted. “It will be good enough if he is kind to me.”

  “Like as not he will be. Who could be unkind to you?” As they passed a stall displaying the hanging carcasses of freshly killed pigs, Nancy leaned closer and whispered, “And if you’ve doubts, I’ve heard the butcher’s wife is sickly, so you may want to bide your time to see if he’s a widower soon. You may not like the smell, but think of the pies!”

  “Oh, you are wicked. Anyway I don’t fancy a widowed husband—he’d forever be comparing you to the first wife, and there would be children to look after.” Children were all very well in their place, but Kathryn was quite looking forward to getting away from her younger sister and brothers. She would have her own someday, of course, but she had no interest in taking on another woman’s brats. No, a successful shoemaker from a good, fast-rising family would make a fine husband. Master Guy’s cousins were merchants, and he might well go into trade himself someday. And not bad-looking into the bargain, though he must be nearly thirty.