London - Edward Rutherfurd [369]
1620
On a star-filled night in July 1620, a crowd of some seventy people stood in a semicircle by the bank of the River Thames and waited for the dawn. Some of them were nervous, some excited; but as Martha gazed across the glinting water, she felt only a great rejoicing in the glory of the Lord.
For years, godly folk in London had spoken of this enterprise. But who could ever have dreamed that she would be part of it? Who could have foreseen the extraordinary change in the Dogget family? Or the unexpected attitude of the boy. Or, most wonderful of all, the recent but mystifying circumstances that had brought the family to the water’s edge this morning. She looked up at her husband and smiled. But John Dogget did not smile.
John Dogget loved his wife. When Jane Fleming had disappeared from the Globe twenty years before, Dogget had been deeply upset, but time had passed, and two years later he had married a lively girl, a waterman’s daughter, and had known great happiness until her sudden death. The months that followed, however, had been so miserable that when he married Martha he had scarcely known what he was doing.
He would never forget how he had brought her home on their wedding day. He had tried to prepare the house by the boatyard, but the family had always lived in cheerful chaos, and God knew what she had felt. Nor did their wedding night, though the essentials were duly accomplished, bring her, he suspected, much joy. He went to his work the next morning in a thoughtful and uncertain mood. But returned that evening to a transformation. The house was clean. The children’s clothes had been washed. On the table stood a large pie and a bowl of apples stewed with cloves; and from the grate there came the aroma of freshly cooked oatcakes. The family had not eaten so well in a year. That night, overcome with gratitude, he made love to her with tenderness and passion.
How quietly she had won the children over too. She never forced them to acknowledge her, just went about her work, but they quickly noticed that their home smelled fresh instead of stale, their clothes were mended, the larder stocked; an air of pleasant calm descended upon the house. Nor did she ever ask for help; but it was not long before the eight-year-old-girl wanted to cook with her, and a few days later the oldest boy, seeing Martha sweeping out the yard, took the broom from her and said: “I’ll do it.” The following week, as they were working on a boat, he remarked to his father: “She’s good.”
She still puzzled him. The Doggets were a merry family by nature: hardly a day went by without them finding something funny. But when they were laughing, he noticed that Martha would sit, quietly smiling, because she saw they were happy, but not laughing herself. He began to wonder whether she had seen the joke. And did she really like their sexual life? Certainly she became aroused, but if she always gently welcomed his advances, he couldn’t help noticing that she never took the initiative herself. Perhaps she felt it was ungodly. But when she asked him, after three months – “Am I a good wife?” – and he had answered, with real feeling – “None better” – she seemed so pleased that to introduce any hint of doubt seemed unkind.
And in due course they had a child.
The change had come so slowly that for a time he hardly noticed, but gradually he came to understand that something had happened to his family. Even in rowdy Southwark, the better sort of stallkeepers now gave him and his children a polite smile – something they had certainly never done before. Still more startling was the day when the parish beadle, speaking of some noisy drunkards, apologized to him for the disturbance to “godly people like yourselves”. But the true turning point had come one day when, pointing to a handsome young waterman and remarking to his ten-year-old daughter, “There’s a husband for you,” the girl had seriously replied: “Oh no, father, I want to marry a respectable man.” He