Staying Forever
It’s said the past is a foreign country. The future is no more a comprehensible place to arrive at: With its foreign tropes; its loose, complicated, easiness. A world where the horizons have shrunk so that everywhere is a distance measured in hours of travel. The here, the now, easily bewilders, bemuses, confuses.
Not that I travel any magnificent distances.
Once, once I made a great journey, and maybe that is where my regrets have their source. Or maybe like all great rivers, it is merely one of many, many, tributaries.
April 1681
“The minister asked why you were not in church this morning.”
“And what did you tell the hell-breathing leech?” I sat at the crude wooden bench which was the focus of our small living area. Near my elbow a small leather flagon of weak home-brewed beer stood next to a platter, scattered with the remains of my lunch. I looked at my wife, returned from the day’s service and the ten-mile round trip on foot it entailed.
“I told him enough to protect us, so he makes no trouble in the parish. But John there will be consequences, and soon, because of your pride,” she said.
I watched as she removed her woolen cloak, hung it near the door. She moved to the table and gathered my plate. Her movements were small and jerky, failing to cover her anxiety and frustration. The fire hissed as she scraped the remains from the plate into it.
“Mary, my dearest, I have news for you that makes Pastor Carson irrelevant.”
Stopping, she turned to look at me, worry lines creasing her brow, lips pursed into a cupid’s bow. She tucked wisps of dark hair behind her ear and waited for me to speak.
“I have more word from Master Penn. His messenger came this morning. Although we have different views on scripture, we are of the same mind on each man's right to be unbound by either the King, or his religious popinjays. Master Penn has permitted us to join him in a new venture, Mary we are going to the new world to be free!”
Mary smothered a gasp with her hand. She knew I had been in correspondence with William Penn; his Lordship she called him. She seemed impressed that an aristocrat was willing to be in contact with a man of no status or wealth, such as I. To share ideas freely and be willing to accept her lowly husbands’ thoughts.
Like an increasing number I was strong, not only in arm, but in mind and spirit; dissatisfied with the layering of society that was accepted, by so many, as right and ongoing. In Master Penn, there seemed to be a man open to such thoughts, and with the ability to do more than merely talk; giving hope to those of us held lower down the ranks of society.
Unusually, for the child of a tenant farmer in rural Lincolnshire, my father had me taught to read. I devoured words in the ravenous manner a runt suckles when it latches onto a teat. Later, I was apprenticed to a forward-thinking guildsman. He too encouraged me to read. But also, to think, and to express myself. He gave me access to more books, folios and pamphlets than I could reasonably have expected, philosophy, theology, plays. I read them all.
It gave me ideas above my 'natural station’ according to many. When my Master died unexpectedly, the council of guildsmen acted decisively to ensure that I was offered no other position. They then acted with wicked vindictiveness by providing no reference or reason for a half finished apprenticeship, making it appear I had left under a cloud.
By then, Mary and I had already formed an attachment, so we hastened our plans for marriage. Through friends of my father we found an old tithe cottage, fallen into disrepair. In return for restoring it, we negotiated a peppercorn rent for the first ten years. We would not be here for all of those years.
“When are we to go, how, when, what about…” Mary waved her arms about as the enormity of the matter hit her. Reaching out my arms, I gathered her towards me, sitting her beside me.
Moving the thirty or so miles from her home town had been difficult, even though she left behind no family of note, following the death of her mother. Her father had re-married quickly and made it clear that she was now a botherment in his life.
But this would be a move to leave everything familiar. All the rhythms of life which were natural and comfortable would be uprooted and displaced in ways that neither of us could fully comprehend. I had already considered the matter deeply, but for Mary the surprise was coming as a sudden clap of thunder does on one of the muggy summer afternoons we’ve had these past few years.
“It will be strange my love, it will be new. But I am promised we will have land of our own, good land, where we can build our own home and raise our family. This colony will be a holy experiment, the seed of a holy nation, if God so wills it.” The words Lord Penn had written excited me, and I wanted to take away the worries of my dear wife and replace them with the enthusiasm that I had.
“This is sudden John, I had no idea you were considering such a thing. How are we to do this?”
So I told her of the plans as I knew them. Along with the offer to travel we had also received a grant of land. We were to join a ship with other colonists. That on arriving in the new world, we would all travel together to our allotted land, and assist each other in constructing our dwellings, laying out a town and building society anew.
I told her we were to leave before the summer solstice.
August 1684
“Master Fletcher.”
Alderman Richard Masterson's Liverpudlian accent had a distinct nasal strike that I found grating. It was not the only thing about him which annoyed me. He had schemed and connived to obtain his position, ingratiating himself with those he knew would benefit him, derisive of those he felt would not. His superficial charm and shrewd maneuverings granted him power here in the new world, which had eluded him on the broad muddy flats of the Mersey.
“Master Fletcher, we need to discuss the indigent situation.”
I turned to look at him. Where I adopted a manner of dress using local materials and cloth, he stuck with more traditional garb. In thick, woolen frock coat and periwig, he was the very image of what we sought to leave behind, and his manner fitted his style. His desire to live freely in Master Penn’s theocracy did not extend to any who overtly disagreed with his own ideas, whether native to the lands around us, or fellow colonists.
“Alderman Masterson.” I turned towards him, careful to stay under the cape that draped my shoulders and legs, so that the rain coursing over the brim of my hat continued on down the flanks of my roan. “Is there to be another town council this four-week? I will ensure every effort to attend.”
“It is the very least that we would expect, there are grave matters to discuss, and you are key to ensuring we settle these matters efficaciously. They cannot be allowed to drag on any further, the council will not countenance it.” Despite the coolness of the weather, his cheeks were flushed a turbid red which stood out against his otherwise grey pallor. Stood on the wooden walkway around his general store, the extended awning protected him from the steady downpour. He waved an arm angrily towards me.
“Make it a priority Master Fletcher, a priority.” With that, he swung around and stomped through the door of his store.
§
When I told Mary about the council meeting, she assumed Masterson's baleful influence without me having mentioned his hectoring.
“That man will have you driven off the council, he cares for nothing but himself and his pockets.” Her summation was as neat as I had heard, and her fear well-founded. Others on the council had told me of private discussions about my removal. “I suppose that means you will be away all of Friday. We had better get the cheese done tomorrow and, if I finish the patterns, then I will come with you and check the store for what materials are affordable. Maybe I will take notes at the meeting myself, the minutes you get never seem to tally with your memory of the discussions.”
I smiled and stroked her arm. Before we came here, she had shown no desire to read or write, viewing them as unnecessary to life, but only a few months after I became a councilor, she had insisted that I teach her both. She claimed that it was so she could write down recipes for the new types of vegetation, and herbs, and meats we now had access to. But I soon noticed how often she arranged things to be with me on council days.
“That will be grand Mary, we'll take a basket for lunch and, if it has stopped raining, there is that nice place near the river we can sit and picnic.” Her smile was spontaneously brilliant, unlike the recent weather.
§
By Friday the weather cleared, and Mary and I made our way to town where we bought supplies and material for baby clothes. Later we had our picnic by the river.
In the afternoon we made our way to the building that served as our chapel and schoolhouse and council meeting room where we
“We now come to the item on the Lenape. Alderman Masterson, you raised this so I will turn over this part of the meeting to you.”
“Thank-you Chairman.” He nodded politely and turned to address the council and gathered townsfolk.
“We have, and indeed are, striving to build, by the grace of our Lord, a town, indeed a colony, rested on the divine word of God as laid down in his most holy book, the bible. As such it is fine to see that our good efforts are thus far being blessed. Our streets are free of the drunkards, harlots, and cut purses we would see in the towns and villages of England. We live in peace and harmony, our Christian principles a vibrant example to all, of the benefits of living by the standards of the Lord.” There were nods, and murmurs of assent.
“But we must take great care. We must ensure devotedly, and devoutly, that our holy estate, this new theocracy, is protected, is safeguarded from the insidious and continuous attacks of the Devil. Like Israel of old, we are a holy and blessed people, but around are the minions of the Devil, ever willing to flaunt their pagan and debased practices, looking for the opportunity to seduce us from the straight, the virtuous, the righteous path, that may be straight and narrow, but is the way to eternal blessings, and not an easy and broad-way to the fiery judgement of our great Lord.”
He stopped to take breath and look at whatever notes he had. His manner was warm and engaging, but I could see the direction he was taking. He would build his speech in a crescendo, looking to sway the listeners with rhetoric and emotion.
I had seen him do it before.
It always struck me as peculiar that, although mainly Quakers, with the quiet and personal devotion I admired, the strident preaching style of Richard Masterson's rhetoric seemed to strike some dormant chord, that resonated with so many townsfolk.
“It cannot be argued that the greatest threat to the spiritual well-being of our townsfolk is the perverse, and pagan living standards of the local indigents, these Lenape. Now, we have worked hard to help these savages see the light of truth from our Lord. We set example, we invite them to study scripture, we open our hearts and our town to them, but do they respond? Do they repent of their sins and choose the way of the Lord?”
I saw heads shaking, either because they were already committed to the argument or because it played upon their own ideas.
“No, they do not!” He slowed the tempo but raised the volume so that now his voice now booming. “It is time that we stop casting the pearls of our Lord before these swine of the Devil. That we leave them to their heathen worship of animals and rocks and clouds; to their love and revelry in war; to their perverted and obscene reversal of the natural order of the role of man and woman.”
He stopped and looked around theatrically.
“I see some of you, in your purity, know not that these, these, savages, promote their women, who, at their own whim, tell the man who can or cannot; do or not do; who are chosen to judge, to judge!” It almost sounded that he would choke out of indignation, and he paused to take breath.
“Like some heathen version of the papist idolisation of the Mother of God, they are blind to the natural, and God given, dominion of man. These are truly accursed and evil people. We cannot allow them to continue to infest and infect our society. We have shown them kindness, but now has come the time to spurn them and their ways, to push them out into their spiritual darkness and allow them to grub about in their own iniquities until the coming day of judgement. I move that we cease trading with these heathens and banish them from the town and from our lands anywhere!” There was a silence, and he turned and nodded. ”Chairman, I return to you.”
As he sat, the silence gave way to an ovation. This was unusual but not unknown. The undercurrent of fervency I found distasteful. Looking around at my fellow councilors, few gave encouraging nods or smiles. The majority either avoided my eye, stared back with defiance or, in some cases, hostility.
I was gathering my thoughts and arguments when I heard the chairman speaking again, but not as I was expecting. I missed his opening sentences, but my attention was caught as I heard him say.
“…and so, it is right that we move directly to the vote. On the motion that we invoke trading rest— “
I stood swiftly and interrupted him. “Chairman, I must have missed the opportunity to speak in opposition to the motion.”
The room stilled and became utterly silent. If a leaf had dropped it would have sounded as a stampeding herd. Before he, or anyone could respond I pressed on.
“So, before any vote I will make the opposition valediction. We heard our Alderman make a powerful speech in defense of our spiritual welfare, of our desire, our need and our absolute requirement to maintain the spiritual purity of the Almighty…”
October 1684
From the moment I made the speech to the town council, Mary and I were running out of time, though we did not know it. I was not surprised the motion against the Lenape was passed. I was not shocked when I was removed from the council. But the way Mary and I were cut off, ostracized, was unexpected.
We thought it would pass. That our fellow colonists, fellow townspeople, fellow Christians, would never abandon us. We were wrong. Even those who would have remained friendly, were cowed, and bullied by the domineering Alderman and his like-minded cronies.
I do not know if this was some design to change my mind on the matter, to break me to the common view; or whether it was the actions of a vindictive man, wielding power, and influence in a cruel way. Whichever is true, the result was Mary and I were spurned.
The last time I headed for town I called at the Cooper’s. We had been friends with them from the moment we met on the dockside in Plymouth. They lived a little way up-river from the town, where a strong current turned the water wheel to grind flour. As I approached Anne saw me and ushered the children inside, then followed them herself. When I knocked the door, it was opened the merest sliver.
“Paul is not here, and you can’t be here either,” Anne said.
“Anne, Mary and I are desperate for help. With the birth of William we just haven’t been able to—“ I wasn’t allowed to finish.
“I’m sorry, John. But the Alderman has people watching.” Her eyes glanced left and right and I found myself turning to look, despite the Cooper’s house being well out of sight of town. “If he knows you have been here Paul will be in trouble. Sorry.”
The door closed and I stood for a moment looking at the grain of the lime-washed beech. If our closest friends wouldn’t help, then going to town would also be futile. I headed home.
On the way I tried to piece together the fragments of how Masterson had become so powerful, and in such a short time. It was only a few months since my expulsion from the council, and I was not the only one who disagreed with him. I could find no sense in it and, more pressingly, I was concerned for the low state of our winter supplies.
§
I arrived home to visitors.
Our Lenape friends, Kitakima and his wife Opala, sat on the porch with Mary; William was snuggled against Opala; Kitakima rocked back and forth on my chair, even from distance I could see he was resting his eyes.
Mary spotted me riding up the lane and must have said so, they all watched, Kitakima turning his head and lifting a single eyelid. When I got closer Mary went inside and, as I finished tying the horse up, she came back out with a beaker and jug.
“Pale John, Mary has been telling us of your words in our behalf,” said Kitakima bluntly, eschewing greetings he cut straight to the matter most important to him.
“You look well Opala,” I said. Mary handed me the beaker and I took a mouthful of cool water, then smiled at her. “Thank you.” Only then did I turn to Kitakima. He was still sat on my chair, flexing on the balls of his feet to maintain a gentle rocking motion. “It’s good to see you Kitakima. How are you? Are your sons well? Opala is looking well.” I turned and nodded at his wife, who was grinning. When I turned back, he was in the process of standing and, as he came upright, we clasped arms and shoulders.
He stared at me intently, rubbing my coat between his fingers, before speaking again. “No man may live apart. This cloak is not one cloak, but all the stitches together are the cloak. Why have you not told me what happened with your people?”
When we first met I thought that Kitakima’s speech was affected by learning our language later on in life - he had sent a son to learn English by working as a guide in a colony further north, then had his son teach him - but as I got to know him, and learn some of his language in return, I discovered it was not the case. He spoke the same way in his own language.
“Because our ways are as strange to you, as yours are to us. We weren’t worried about it.” I said as he sat back down.
“But now we speak with Mary, and she is worried, and I don’t see any supplies on your horse after the trip to your town.”
“Well, it wasn’t—“
He interrupted me, “We are friends already Pale John. No need to lie. You have no supplies and winter begins to draw near. I know your custom is to stay in this house all year, but you should consider coming with us when we leave until the spring. If your pale fellow man will not care for you and Mary and your boy, come with us. We will.”
I looked at Mary. She looked surprised, so I guessed this proposal was new to her as well.
“Kitakima, I am not sure what to say.”
“Say yes,” said Opala.
November 1684
The early winter storm drove snow across the land. I struggled against it, dragging the sled with increasingly weary steps. Occasionally I looked back at Mary and William; they were swaddled in furs, cloaks, and blankets, now rimed with frost and snow. An especially powerful gust rocked me and I stumbled, steadied, then moved forward again.
We made the decision to abandon our home too late. Not wanting to give up on the dream, not wanting to forsake the effort we put into creating our own Eden.
Winter came early. We considered heading to Willington, but it was too great a journey for Mary and young William. Without supplies to see us through the winter, and spurned by our fellow colonists, the freely offered friendship of the Lenape was our only chance. We could only hope we had not left it too late, that they held to their plans to leave after the new moon, and not gone with the early coming of the snow.
The early afternoon light was already beginning to diminish, shades of darkening grey which, with the driving snow, smoothed the contours of the land to give none of the usual way-markers to their encampment. I could only head in, what I hoped was, the right direction.
One foot went in front of the other, the wind unrelenting, the cold deepening with the darkness. My muscles burned as if boiling lead flowed through them instead of blood, and they continually attempted to stiffen and cramp.
The straps securing Mary and William’s travois to me dug and chafed, the design had been given me by the clan, and they swore to covering huge distances without discomfort. I must have got something wrong when I made it, for only the knowledge that it was my wife and son I pulled, prevented me from abandoning the sled altogether. It would have been easier if we still had my roan, but the poor beast had broken a leg and wouldn’t have survived the winter.
I dared not stop. The fear of becoming still, of allowing my limbs the respite they screamed for, drove me on. Slow, stumbling, at times nearly crawling up a slope, or against the strongest of gusts, I ground on. We came to the river, and by luck I recognised the curve it took, in summer we had been here, learning to catch fish the Lenape way, Mary learning how to weave the rich warm cloaks.
I was out in my dead reckoning, but not by much, the camp was not far, in clear weather, would even be visible. I turned and, with the gale now buffeting me sideways, I struck out over the last few hundreds of yards.
January 1685 - October 1685
“He awakens. Welcome back from the the spirit lands my friend.” Blinking, my eyes blurred, fuzzed and gradually focused on Kitakima. “You have been travelling a long time.”
“Mary.” My voice croaked, hoarse and dry, and Kitakima nodded.
“She is coming. Here, take a drink for your throat.” I sat forward and drank something warm, and redolent with herbs. I lay back and fell asleep.
When I woke again Mary was sitting next to me and she smiled, but it was weak and weary, not her normal radiant smile.
“Hey.” I smiled and her face split, crumpling in grief, tears streamed from her eyes.
“Sorry.” She muttered and stumbled out through the flap.
Kitakima came back in shortly after, I was struggling to get up.
“Here, let me help you.” I grasped his arm, my legs would not hold me. The tremors in my thighs and calves threatened to topple us both, and he supported me as I lay back down.
“What has happened?” There were things I could not work out what. Kitakima looked at me and slowly nodded.
“My friend, Mary has been sat by your side day and night for two moons. We found you collapsed in the snow; you are lucky that the dogs had to go outside.” He sighed and shifted position slightly. “Your son is dead, you have been dead in all but breathe for two months, and Mary is nearly dead inside. She is grieving the death of your boy.” He shook his head slightly.
I lay, slumped into the furs of my bed. At no time in my life had I felt so lost, so uncertain of how, or what, to do. Every decision I made with confidence was turned to ash beneath me, and it was not only myself consumed in the pyre.
“There is another thing you must know.” He looked at me, and I could see un-surety in him.
I wondered what further disaster there could be. There was nothing left for me to lose.
“What?”
“You and Mary are now different, changed.”
“How? What do you mean changed?” His words made no sense.
“There are times when a body should die, but the earth, the land is not ready to release it. You and Mary should have died in the storm, you should not have survived. But the land has sustained you, kept you for itself, will keep you so eternally.”
“I don’t understand.” Weary, worried, confused, I could hear him speaking, but my mind was full of thoughts of Mary and William and his words were sounds without meaning.
“You and Mary will live on, but there are limits to how far you may travel, limits to the land that sustains you. If you try to travel further, you will die. We are at the edge of your lands. We nearly lost you altogether.”
I gave up trying to understand. “Where is my Mary? I need to see Mary.”
§
Eventually we began to comprehend, if not to understand. The life that we lived now was dependent on the land upon which we stood. But there was a limit to where we could go. As we drew near to that limit, we could both feel a tangible force, a vibration in the soul that disturbed, and there was a sense of nothingness for what lay in front of us. We could see the land stretching before us, we could hear the call of wild animals. In the spring we smelt the scent of flowers borne on the wind, but it was as if it sprang from nowhere.
“What did you do to us Kitakima?” I asked him as we trudged through deep snow, following tracks and hoping to bring meat back to camp. He shook his head and carried on.
It was a conversation we kept having. Mary was convinced they had used some demonic magic.
“It is not our magic,” he said to us, to her. “It is the magic of the land. You must find where your boundaries are, learn where the land wants you to live. No one knows why this happens. But it happens.”
“It has never happened in England,” Mary replied.
“Maybe it has,” said Opala, “but your strange beliefs make people afraid to say.”
We considered that a lot.
§
When spring arrived, we decided to follow Kitakima’s advice, to test our boundaries. Our friends provided us with a wiquoam and food. We started up near Newport and went east to the Maryland border, down through Kent and Sussex counties to the ocean, then along the sea front, where we turned back, up the broad muddy flats of Delaware Bay.
We avoided towns and settlements until eventually we were back where we started. William’s grave was covered in a blanket of wild flowers, a small magnolia tree providing shade from the summer’s heat.
Meeting up with the clan again and the warmth of their concern was a sweet balm. But beneath, our wounds lay open and burning. For Mary, they festered, though I did not know.
Nothing soothed the loss. I had promised her life in the new world, and provided isolation, death, and an unreal twilight existence neither of us fully comprehended.
As the summer drew to a close the trees took on golden hues and the clan made plans to move westward. Mary’s mood started to darken. I tried to keep her busy, planning how we would spend the winter, deciding where we would travel, and how we would protect ourselves from winter storms. She barely responded, until one morning, as we sat on the riverbank watching our friends head into the distance.
“Can we go to Willington? I think I need to be around English people again.” I looked at her, blue eyes peering at me from dark hollows.
“Of course. We will do that first if you want.” She nodded, and reached to take my hand, we leaned together and with her hair soft on my cheek I wondered if she was, at last, finding a way forward.
October-December 1685
With the clan gone, we stayed another week at the encampment, near our sons grave. Collecting and packing together things we needed to travel, we packed them onto the horse that had been a gift from one of the young bucks of the clan. Eventually we made off, heading east towards the water, and then then following it up the broad muddy flats of Delaware Bay, until we came to Willington.
Camping in a secluded spot, we dressed in the remainder of our more traditional clothes. These had been kept packed and unused, with the little money we had, for over a year. We headed towards town, nervous and excited. Being sat together on one horse was cosy and, as Mary leaned against me, I fancied I could feel her heart beat against my back.
Willington had changed in the years since I had last seen it, there were more streets, more stone built houses, more people. Making our way through it I had expected to receive stares, but we were ignored, a few glances only; there were sights stranger than a man and woman sharing a horse.
We made our way to the hotel where we stayed for a night after first arriving, Mary having expressed her desire for a real cup of tea, and some fruit cake. Tea was an extravagance rarely experienced in the best of times, and we thought ourselves very regal as we sipped delicately from fine cups.
“John, Mary?” We both turned at the questioning way our names were said and found ourselves looking at Paul Cooper. “It is you. By the Lord, I thought you both dead, and here you are sitting taking tea.”
“Hello, Paul.” It seemed only polite to respond, we had been close friends at one point. He pulled out a chair and perched on it, resting an arm on the table, and leaning towards us with an openly surprised expression.
“We came to find you, but the house was a wreck; the windows gone, and animal tracks every-where. Did you leave before the town went, or what?”
It was our turn to look surprised.
“Before the town went where?” I asked, and we stared at each other in confusion. “Let’s start again. The last time we were anywhere near town was when I spoke to Anne, and she shooed me away. We were at the house another seven or eight weeks. We left just after the first snowstorm hit, it nearly killed us, did kill our son, but we survived, with help. We haven’t been back since. What happened to the town?”
“Right, of course, I was away when you last came. Anne said she was scared to speak with you because of Masterson, God-rot his soul.” The way he spat out Masterson’s name was telling. Paul had sided with me for the main, though he voted against the Lenape; for fear he had admitted, not conviction. “That winter a plague struck the town, every household suffered, John, everyone. I lost Anne and both the children.”
He carried on speaking, over-riding our attempt to show sympathy.
“The Alderman called it a plague from God, said it was a punishment for our sins. After you were banished, he became worse, breathing judgement and hellfire at every turn. He had Sarah Arkwright stoned to death for witchcraft near the start of the plague, swore it would be atonement.”
He looked from me to Mary and back, shaking his head as he did so. “My Anne was already gone, died early on, and the children too. I left the day Sarah was condemned at his leading. Took my horse and left everything else. Governor Clayton was good enough to hear my tale and dispatched a troop of men. I went to show the way. When we got there, the town held a few dead bodies, including Sarah’s, rotting, and surrounded by stones; but no sign of the rest. We set fires and burned every building, to kill the plague, and we came to look for you.” He lowered his head as if in prayer. “I pray for mercy on all of their souls, except that evil son of the Devil, Masterson.”
Mary and I sat in silence, astounded. Eventually Mary spoke.
“Paul, I am so sorry. Anne was…”
Paul interrupted her, “Anne was scared of Masterson. I was scared of Masterson. Anyway, they are both gone, and I am going too. Back to England, my ship leaves on the early tide. I have had enough of the new world.” He stood, readying himself to move off. “Do you remember staying in this hotel when we arrived? I am to sleep here tonight, my last hours in the colony. Ironic is it not, to begin, and end, here. Anyway, may the Lord bless you You are good people and we did you wrong. I’m sorry.”
He turned without awaiting response and, heading out of the doors, passed into the street. We both stared in his direction, our tea cooling and forgotten.
§
After Paul left our appetite was gone, and with it the small, happy, bubble we had started to inhabit. A melancholy spirit descended. We went for a walk around the town and at one point stood overlooking the harbour with its ships.
“How far out to sea do you think our boundary goes?” The question was a good one, and I hadn’t considered it.
“Probably similar to on land, about a half-mile. Why, do you think we should sail our boundaries?” I spoke with a smile at this last bit, but the look Mary gave me was one of her wistful, far away ones. “Mary.”
“It’s okay my dear. Can we afford to stay in the hotel for the night, in any hotel. I’d like to sleep in a proper bed again, even if it is just one night.” The idea had appeal and I tried to remember if we had seen room rates, no clear recollection presented itself.
“That would be nice, let’s head back and see if there is a room free.”
When I awoke Mary was gone. I knew instantly, unable to feel her presence. Not just the physical warmth in the bed, but her presence, a gap she alone filled. Her note, on fine hotel paper, told me of her plan to board ship, and endure whatever form death took, as she sailed out to sea.
My breathless flight to the docks was far too late. Two ships had sailed together on the morning tide, and while one shore-hand remembered a woman boarding unusually late, he could not swear on which vessel she embarked. It did not matter, by now both ships would be out of the bay, and Mary's fate sealed, or close to it.
Her letter spoke only of her loss and suffering, laying no blame, casting no stone of guilt. But I could not read, without feeling each word form itself in accusation against me.
I walked in a daze, returning to the hotel without conscious thought. Part of me must have remained aware, for I paid our due money and received receipt for it. For many years that receipt acted as cover for Mary’s missive, protecting it as I kept it folded in a pocket. The sheets gathering, over the years, a patina from the reading, and re-reading; words streaked as un-guarded tears fell upon the sheet in the early days, when I was careless in shielding it.
Initially I hoped, desperately hoped, that I would see a ship sailing back upriver, make my way to the dock and find Mary waiting. For those storm-filled weeks I haunted the riverside, became known, recognised, pitied, despised and ignored. But I still hoped. We did not know where our boundaries may go, we had only tested them around the land, maybe at sea the land did not know you had gone.
The anniversary of our son’s death came the day before my fragile hope was destroyed. A battered ship made its way to shore, ragged chunks of ice scraping around it as the winter started to grip. It was one of the two ships to have left on the morning that Mary did.
I forced myself into the mêlée around its landfall, calling Mary’s name, my voice stretched and breaking. Voices shouted, a few calling for someone to shut the madman up, but on the deck of the ship a ragged man, whose clothing spoke of previous quality, heard my calls, and fixed on me. He spoke with the harbourmaster, who had boarded with the excise man, and pointed at me. Soon I was ushered up the boarding plank and the three of us were huddled in the captain’s cabin, my gaunt unshaven face a reflection of the captain, the man who had pointed for me.
“Tell me about this Mary.” His voice was west country, Bristolian I would guess. He and the harbourmaster sat and watched me.
“My wife, Mary, she left on your ship, where is she, she left on your ship.” I raved, stumbling over the words. “My Mary.”
The Captain stared hard before speaking. “Not my ship, my cousin’s, though I warned him agin’ it. Why was your wife on that ship?”
“She wanted to go back to England, the death of our son… Where is my Mary?” I beseeched, keening her name in forlorn hope. The Captain continued to stare and before he spoke I knew, with certainty in my soul I knew. The last vestige of hope surrendered its grip and the certainty swept through me, so that as he began speaking, I was already dissolved sobbing and muttering, whispering her name over and over, a catechism of loss.
“Like all on my cousin’s ship, she is perished. Not a more than half a league out of the bay, the ship and all her crew and passengers. Wrecked and gone in the time it took me to come about. If the winds allowed, I’d have returned then, but they drove us on so we ended going back to England.”
Present Day
In the years after Mary's death, I had cause, and plenty of time, to dwell on what happened to us. Maybe if William had survived, then we could have lived our life together, could have built something hidden away in the backwaters of this tiny state, obscured in tall trees and behind a bulwark of cornfields; surviving 'off grid' before ever there was a grid to be on. I have imagined us living, we three, together, in happy peace, protecting our identity, our longevity, in polite rural anonymity.
I have also spent long hours wondering where I could have changed things, taken us down a route that led elsewhere. Maybe I should never have stood against Richard Masterson, or left England, or married Mary, or learned to read. I don't know where the chain that leads up to now starts, where I could have snapped the link.
I do not believe it all pre-ordained. I see no dead hand of fate, lying immovable across the skein of life. Just innumerable actions, and their consequences, stretching on and on. I have no answers, just the regrets.
But where Mary did not, or could not, find things to live for, I did. It took time, and in truth it is only the power of the land that sustained me in the first months and years as I wandered, uncaring of myself in any form. My clothes becoming more torn and ragged. I wandered, insensitive to the winter’s depths, detached from my physical needs and requirements. Yet I lived. Indifferent I may have been, but I could never bring myself to consider the route that Mary took, to actively renounce life.
I have wondered often what she thought, on that ship, as she reached the boundary. Of how the end finally came for her. The captain spoke of his cousin’s ship sinking swiftly, and the stories that made their way around the town spoke of strange lights and noises. Though by the time I was recovered enough to try piece these together there were only poorly remembered secondhand accounts to collect. I suspect that the combination of time and drink had embellished whatever tales the sailors originally recounted to a point that they were as far removed from actual events as I was from my Lincolnshire birthplace.
It was my Lenape friends who, again, saved me. Wrapping me up and binding me to sanity. Forcing me back from the unbound plains of grief that I sojourned, re-attaching my mind and body together. For three years they refused to leave me alone, each winter forsaking the security of their winter havens to ensure I remained safe.
Over time I started to see beyond my own loss, to see things in the world around me and find things of interest.
There is the beauty of my country, and by country, I mean the land I am bound to. There is no way to understand how my limits came to be the same as those that would form Delaware; some strange cosmic irony, some as yet undiscerned purpose, I have no way of knowing.
There has been the ongoing discovery of other Eternals. My long-departed friend Kitakima told me of ones he knew in other tribes, but it wasn’t until some point in the eighteen-forties that I met one. A woman, Caroline, tied to the original thirteen colonies, who sought me out. She travelled throughout her realm collecting Eternals, writing them down in a little calf-skin bound notebook and encouraging them to be in contact with each other. From her I learnt of some in Rhode Island, the Carolinas and Georgia. She drifted back about thirty years later, after the civil war, and had tell of more, including rumour of a whole Amish community of Eternals in rural Pennsylvania.
I remember the first time I felt her presence. A feeling I had not known since Mary. In truth, for a few moments I thought it was Mary somehow returned, and the realisation that it could not be, that she was still dead, almost undid me. Nigh on a hundred and fifty years since her death and my sanity was near destroyed. Time is a great healer, but when the time you have is eternity the wounds take longer - well, the ones in your soul do.
In the months after Caroline and I first met she stayed with me in my cabin down by the Atlantic shore. I remember the raw moonshine we drank while baring our souls to each other, showing the scars, sharing the regrets and, for a while, sharing a human warmth that I had long forgotten.
Her story was different to mine in all but the loss. For me Mary, for her, well, the details are unimportant, but she knew the same kind of grief and had come close to making the same decision to end her life. We spent long hours speculating on how we survived, what power kept us and decided what and where our boundaries were. There was no real way to know. But we pieced together things we did know, and considered what help we could give to a new Eternal, some form or structure, so that they would not have to choose between death or the exquisite loneliness of eternity in a fleeting world.
For me it was not much more than time spent in idle speculation, but Caroline saw it as a program to follow, a quest she could pursue. I was still too raw.
We disagreed on the subject, then we argued, then we fought, then she left. The last time I saw her was back when telephones were making in-roads into the Delaware countryside. She wanted to know if I would be on the new tree of Eternals, an update of something she had done via letters previously.
I still didn't.
§
By chance I met a new Eternal from neighbouring Maryland a few months ago. He was out walking and testing the limits of his boundaries, and I could feel his presence from half a county away. We sat together at the blurred edge of our kingdoms and talked in the warmth of an early fall afternoon, the sun's heat leeching into my bones as it did into the rich loam beneath me.
“Y'know you'se called the ‘Old Man of Delaware' don't you?” His accent was pure New Jersey, where he had, allegedly, lived a subset of the gangster lifestyle. But it was the question and not the accent which rattled me.
“I don't understand.”
“When I was still recovering from my, err, injuries,” he had admitted to them being gunshot wounds, received while undertaking some nefarious activity in Ocean City. “This sweet dame comes by and explains everything to me, well, not everything. I still don't understand it really. However she tells me I ain't alone, d’at I need to test my boundaries and d’at I live next door to ‘The Original Eternal of these United States’, d'at was the exact phrase, ‘The Original Eternal of these United States', and says you is the ‘Old Man of Delaware' and that I should try to meet you.”
“When you say 'sweet dame' do you mean Caroline? And does she still want every Eternal she meets to be on her telephone tree or whatever, these days?” I could picture her sitting, instilling this new Eternal with a lore that did not exist, trying to root him in a mythology that wasn't codified, wasn't true, but that would give him something to hold on to as the slow shock of reality coalesced over the next sixty, seventy, eighty years. The very thing we had argued and parted over.
“Yeah, it was Caroline. You know since being immortal like…”
I interrupted. “Not immortal. Just, I don't know, long lived. You can still die you know”
He nodded, busily carrying on with his train of thought. “Yeah, sure, whatever, but you know I really been learning stuff. Maybe I should a' paid attention in kindergarten, but I didn't know what the thirteen colonies she said she was tied to were, or d’at most of the guys who fought for independence were like, Brits, or their kids or grandkids.”
I smiled, interrupting him again, “English, like me and Caroline.”
"Yeah, like I said. But you sounds American."
"I am American. I fought for the right to be American."
He looked at me. "Jeez!"
Coming at my history through the eyes of someone who hasn't experienced it, who barely understood it, made me wonder what changes we would yet see, what history remains to be experienced or created. Suddenly I had a desire to be part of the world again, instead of just existing in it. To learn once more the rites and rote, of meaningful interaction with the grand sweep of humanity, or at least with others like myself.
And I want to speak to Caroline again. It has been too long a time to not speak with such an old friend, and of course I want to find out why, with her being Eternal over a half century longer than myself, I was being called the ‘Old Man of Delaware'. What made me, Eternal for near a hundred years before independence, ‘The Original Eternal of these United States'?