The Hearth and Eagle by Anya Seton Read Free Book Online Page A

long choking moan. Phebe’s hands gripped each other and she floundered through the black wash of fear. Fear for Goody Carson, that stupid but well-tempered woman reduced now to a thing less than human—and that other fear which she had not dared face. I too, next February maybe—like that creature in there—no!—it is but the hardships have delayed me. I cannot have conceived in that bunk where she lies now, conceived in the moldy straw—the lice—the ignoble stealthiness, watchful even in the unguarded ecstasy because the Brents might hear.
    The ship lurched onward through the falling night, though the howling of the wind had abated, and the motion. On the deck above her head heavy footsteps passed. She heard the muffled shout of orders.
    Around Master Wenn a group still listened, their heads bowed. Phebe looked down at her wedding ring, and into the confusion of fear there came the thought of the Lady Arbella.
She
would not give way like this, possessed of inner panic, resentful that her husband did not somehow divine a need and fly from man’s work to comfort her. The Lady Arbella was strong and invincible.
    Phebe moistened her dry lips, got off the bench, and went to the fire. No one had thought to replenish it, and the logs had fallen apart to smoldering ash. Yet food must be cooked for the children.
    Her head throbbed as she bent over, but she shoveled the ashes into a heap, careful not to disturb the thick coating of dirt and brick dust which protected the wooden planking under the fire. She studied to lay each stick of pitchy kindling fair and square. As she finished and the flames aided by wind from the bellows crackled upward to the oak logs, a new sound came from the small cabin which had long been quiet. The acrid cry of the new-born.
    Master Wenn closed his Bible. They all pressed through the door. Mrs. Bagby met them triumphantly. Her falling band was stained with blood, her fat face haggard, her hair in wisps. She held a swaddled bundle. “A girl. Never have I so needed my skill.”
    “But the mother—” cried Phebe, staring at the still mound.
    “She’ll do.” Mrs. Bagby shrugged, put the baby at the foot of the bunk. “Fair lot o’ trouble she gave me. Has the strongwater been broached?”
    A sigh ran over them all. The moment of unity passed; they fell apart into their separate groups. Master Wenn and the two old men went to find the brandy. The children fell to quarreling beneath the ladder.
    Most of the women gathered around, asking the midwife eager questions, while she cleansed herself a little in a cask of sea water.
    Phebe had no taste for spirits, but when the brandy came she helped the others to mix it with the river water they had taken on at Yarmouth, and like them drank thirstily from the dipper.
    Later when Mark appeared at last, bringing with him the freshness of damp sea air, she had hidden all trace of her fears.
    Mark was in high spirits and full of the day’s happenings on deck. The skiff from the
Arbella
had nearly foundered on her perilous trips between the two ships, but the wind nad turned in the nick of time. They kept fairly well on board there, though many were dying on the
Ambrose.
    “And the Lady Arbella herself?” asked Phebe, braving Mark’s displeasure. But he was in an indulgent mood. “I daresay she bears up like the rest—” he said carelessly. “I heard nothing contrary. Is that woman and her brat to have our bunk?” he looked toward their cabin.
    Phebe nodded. “We can’t turn them out tonight.”
    “Well. Then I must have me another noggin, and you too; ’twill soften our couch.”
    Phebe was grateful for the brandy haze as they lay down on the planking wedged into a space between a hogshead of dried pease and the forward bulkhead. The stink of the bilges was stronger here, and a rat scuttled about their feet. Mark put his arm close around her, and she lay with her head on his shoulder, trying to doze. But she could not.
    The brandy and the