London - Edward Rutherfurd [385]
“I will go,” she said placidly, “to Massachusetts.”
And so it was, in the summer of 1637, that Martha, her young daughter and both Dogget’s sons, prepared to set sail from London. Gideon and his family could not travel yet; and since Gideon needed his help in their little business, it was agreed that Dogget himself would remain in London for a year or so while they decided what to do.
The company that gathered to take ship at Wapping was a varied one. There were a number of craftsmen, a lawyer, a preacher, two fishermen. There was also a young graduate of Cambridge, who had recently inherited money, partly from the sale of a tavern in Southwark. His name was John Harvard.
The last words Martha spoke, as the boat was about to leave, were to Mrs Wheeler. “Promise me that you will keep an eye on my husband.”
So Mrs Wheeler promised that she would.
There were many ships that arrived on the shores of Massachusetts in the autumn of 1637. One was the vessel that carried Martha and John Harvard. Many others also came from England, and some from different places.
Hardly anyone noticed the slow old ship which had ploughed its way up from the Caribbean with a cargo of molasses. Indeed, within a season or two, even the harbour-master and the clerk who noted its arrival at Plymouth would probably have forgotten its existence if the captain of the vessel had not chosen the brief lay-over in port as his time to die. It was memorable because although the hair of the old mariner was white, his skin was black. “Black as your hat,” the clerk told his wife.
Orlando Barnikel died quietly because he knew in his heart that he had no true reason to live any longer.
The years after his buccaneering had not brought Black Barnikel great satisfaction. He had gradually settled into a quieter role as a sea-captain for hire. Men now knew him as a shrewd, skilful old operator, whose ships came through all weathers and who had a knack of avoiding trouble.
Where were his sons? Two, he knew, were dead. One was a Barbary Corsair, a Mediterranean pirate, a lower kind of fellow than he had ever been. A fourth – who even knew? They had gone from him, and come to nothing; it was, he now knew, inevitable for a man who was black in a white man’s world.
Before he died, however, he had decided that there was one last debt he wished to repay. And asking for a lawyer, he privately dictated a brief document, which he gave to the mate, whom he trusted, with a simple instruction that it was to be given to Jane, whom he carefully described. “God knows if she’s alive or what she’s called now,” he said, “but I left her in Virginia.”
Then, for the hour still left him, he had stared silently out of the window, at the harsh, rocky shore and the cold, unforgiving sea.
1642
Who could ever have believed that things had got so far? In 1637, believing that they had cowed the Puritans in England, King Charles I and Archbishop Laud turned their attention northwards and gave orders that the Church of England Prayer Book and services were straight away to be forced upon the dour Presbyterians of Scotland. Within weeks, all Scotland was aflame. And by the following year, a huge organization had arisen of Scots prepared to die to defend their Protestant cause. They had taken an oath; they were armed; they were ready to march upon England. The name of their endeavour was to ring through Scottish history: the Covenant.
To Charles it was time for stern measures. He called to his side his toughest servant, the trusted lieutenant who for some years had been ruling the unlucky Irish with an iron fist. The Earl of Strafford returned and a force of sorts was put together, but half the troops seemed to agree with the Covenanters. After more than a year of useless negotiation, Charles reluctantly summoned