The Hearth and Eagle by Anya Seton Read Free Book Online

cask of spirits,” said Mark. “That alone can make the water safe.”
    The others nodded and murmured. The sailors had beer, but their supplies too were running low, and to stint them had caused mutiny at sea before this.
    The gale had continued and now the rain sliced like silver knives at the rigging. By noon the cold in the cabin was bitter as winter. Teeth chattered and faces turned blue and pinched. Many coughed from the smoke of the cook fire which could not escape through the closed portholes.
    For dinner there was the watery pease porridge in which floated chunks of salt beef. Most had no appetite, and Phebe gave her portion to one of the young boys.
    In midafternoon Mark came in with news. Since the sailor’s death he and another passenger had been pressed into filling some seaman duties. The
Arbella
had managed to send over a skiff to borrow a hogshead of meal, and in return had sent back brandy. There was a feeble cheer, and anxious faces lightened a little.
    By dusk all had forgotten themselves in pity and a new fear. Goodwife Carson suddenly started into active labor. Mrs. Bagby kept her head and habit of firm command, but even the children knew that matters were not going right. The laboring woman’s shrieks tore through the main cabin, until Phebe, horrified by the public exposure of the poor woman’s ordeal, had helped to carry her to the Honeywood bunk in the small cabin. Two of the older women followed, crowding close in the cold, airless space, trying to help the midwife. Anguish and death crowded with them. Helpless, they watched the agonized body wracked not only by labor pains, but by the violent wracking of the ship too. Between pains the woman lifted her head, the hair matted and wet, the eyes like an animal’s. “Can ye not make it still an instant?” she wailed. “An it were quiet an instant, I might—” But a wave so big hit the ship that her body was flung against the bulkhead, and again that thin animal scream splintered the air.
    Phebe, repulsed by the midwife, stumbled into the great cabin and going to the latrine bucket vomited a little. I must get out, she thought. I must. And running to the ladder, she climbed it and pushed with all her strength against the hatch above. She pounded on it frantically. It would not move. She crouched on the upper step, clinging to the rail. The dreadful screams were growing weaker.
    “She can’t endure,” thought Phebe. In the great cabin a steady murmuring had begun. She lifted her head and listened. Master Wenn was reading from the Bible.
    Above the hissing of the waves, the creaking of the joists, and the groans from the cabin, she heard the dry nasal voice intoning—
    “Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband—”
    T HAT will not help her, thought Phebe, with a sudden hot anger. She ran down the ladder, and burst in on them, the little group of women and children and a few shamefaced men who listened.
    “Can you do nothing for her besides
pray!”
she cried.
    They stared at her. Mistress Honeywood had seemed always so composed and aloof.
    Mr. Wenn rested the ponderous Bible on his lap, his tight little face with its peaked gray beard seemed to consider her. His eyes were unexpectedly kindly. He did not rebuke her for interrupting the word of God, even though he disapproved of the Honeywoods as irreligious, careless conformists.
    “And what can we do for her but pray, mistress?” he asked quietly.
    The anger left Phebe and she bowed her head.
    “I don’t know,” she whispered. “Forgive me.” She shivered and drawing her cloak tight around her sank on the edge of a bench.
    Master Wenn bent his head again to the Bible, screwing up his eyes to see the text by the flickering light of the iron lanthorn. Phebe tried to fix her mind on the droning voice, but she could not. From the small cabin now, there came at times a