London - Edward Rutherfurd [371]
The voyage of the Mayflower is well recorded. Making her way down the wide Thames Estuary, the little ship proceeded eastward, the long coast of Kent on her right. Then she turned south, rounding the tip of Kent and passing through the Straits of Dover into the English Channel. At Southampton, halfway along England’s southern coast, the Mayflower was to rendezvous with a sister pilgrim ship the Speedwell. The Mayflower reached Southampton just before the end of the month.
The Speedwell was a very small ship, only sixty tons. As she came up Southampton Water, she seemed to be low in the water and to move in a curious, ungainly manner. Dogget, staring at her, muttered: “She’s overmasted.” And as she drew close, an embarrassed silence descended upon the watchers, broken at last by the eldest boy. “That vessel’s not seaworthy.”
She wasn’t. Within an hour they heard: “She needs a refit before she can sail on.” Nor was this all. Dogget and his son went aboard her at once only to return, shaking their heads. “They’ve hardly any supplies.”
It was well into August before they finally left Southampton. The weather was fine, however, and the mood was lighter. They passed the sandy coast below the New Forest, then the long cliffs and coves of Dorset. By dawn the next day they were off the coast of Devon when Martha heard a shout.
“They’re pulling in.” The Speedwell had sprung a leak.
At last the Speedwell was declared seaworthy again and the two ships set sail. For five days, in a moderate swell, they ploughed slowly westwards. On the sixth day, a hundred leagues out, gazing back at the Speedwell, Martha noticed that it seemed lower in the water, and that it was falling behind. An hour later, the two ships turned back.
“The Speedwell can’t go on. She’s rotten,” Captain Jones told the assembled passengers, when they had returned to the westerly port of Plymouth. “The Mayflower can only take about a hundred of you. So twenty must stay behind.”
In the silence that followed, having held his peace for over six weeks, John Dogget spoke.
“We’ll stay,” he said. His children nodded, even the eldest boy. “We’ve had enough of you,” Dogget said. And Martha could not blame them. Others too now admitted that they would sooner not proceed. “They’re not going to make it,” the eldest boy confided to her.
And so it was, in the month of September, in the year of Our Lord 1620, that the pilgrim fathers finally set sail in the the Mayflower from the port of Plymouth, but without the family of Dogget, who returned to London.
On a bright morning in early October, Sir Jacob Ducket was just returning to his house when he encountered Julius. Seeing his younger son give him a slightly uncertain look, he enquired what was on his mind. After a moment’s hesitation, Julius told him.
“You remember those people, father, with the funny hands.” Sir Jacob frowned. “Well,” the boy went on, “I’ve just seen them again, with Carpenter. I think they’ve come to live with him.”
This came as a great blow to Sir Jacob: because earlier that year, anonymously and through a third party, he had paid them a handsome sum of money to leave. That evening, after sitting alone for some hours with a flagon of wine – a thing he never normally did – Sir Jacob Ducket suffered a stroke. Two days later, it became clear that his two sons, Henry and Julius, must take over his affairs.
It was a familiar sight in those years. Every evening, a little before sundown, she stood there on the low ridge called Wheeler’s Hill, gazing eastwards.
What was she