Constance Hopkins, Age Fourteen
by Kim Ross
That night no one slept, with the ship thrown o’er and o’er beneath the waves, saltwater dripping from the ceiling and seeping through the hull. Tallow candles sputtered in the crannies, casting fetid shadows across Lizzy’s swollen body.
She moaned. More than once a cry came forth that had it been a man’s they would have called it lusty, brave. Coming from a woman, as it did, the men pressed to the far end of our feeble cabins, closing their faces in prayer.
Mistress Bradford wiped Lizzy’s forehead with cool, moist cloths. She clung to Lizzy’s hand, straining as the anchor for her tremors. They had fast bound themselves one to the other in our weeks at sea. Lizzy’s kindness drew Mistress Bradford in, though Mistress Bradford was a Pilgrim, wife to William, whom men followed as though he spoke for God, and we, the Hopkins family, were keepers of an alehouse. It was Lizzy’s kindness and my two-year-old stepsister, Damaris, who reminded Mistress Bradford of her own son John. Poor John. She whispered to us oft her longing for her son. Poor John left behind in Leiden. Poor John who smelled of springtime. Poor John who burbled at the kittens. Poor John who would forget his mother ere his father let him cross the sea.
Mistress Carver, another friend of Mistress Bradford’s, also tended Lizzy, holding herself close to the coming of the child. Mistress Carver had no children of her own, only Jasper Moor, who, along with his three siblings, had been bound to different families on the ship. Jasper’s so-called father, discovering the adultery of his wife, had cleaved the children from their mother, claimed them for himself and then sold them all as servants to the Pilgrims, sent them to the New World so that neither he, nor their mother or true father, would e’er lay eyes on them again.
That night young Jasper made a nuisance, clinging to Mistress Carver’s skirts. At eight years old, the Elders expected of him bravery. But Jasper cried in shudders as the Mayflower strained and heaved.
I, who had seen both my own mother and my grandmother die with whimpering and wailing, also wished to cry and run away. But my father told me ere we took this ship that only those who leaned into the winds of danger would survive.
And so I stayed, and caught the ocean’s streams in buckets, held back the contents of the cupboards from tumbling onto Lizzy’s bed. I witnessed Mistress Bradford’s eyes, like mine, go wild, her fingers clenching as the ship drowned Lizzy’s cries with aches and tremors of its own. I heard her praying for her son as she clasped Lizzy’s hand.
The heart of grief is loneliness, my mother said, God rest her soul. We must soften the coldness of that loneliness whene’er we can. My mother brought to many comfort, along with bowls of stew or whiskey, by seating one aside another who might be their friend.
I, seeing in young Jasper stark loneliness and grief, set him at Mistress Bradford’s side. Mistress Carver needs her hands, I said, to aid the baby’s coming. Take this seat, I said, and put your foot against these bundles. Hold onto Mistress Bradford that she be not tossed aside.
And she, who saw John’s likeness in the waif, did light another candle ‘gainst the storm. And when the ship went sideways to the waves, and bedpans crashed against the ceiling, she held young Jasper Moor against her breast.
That night God’s mercy brought us Oceanus, my baby brother, alive. But I put Mistress Bradford and Jasper Moor together. It is I, alone, who hold the blame.
* * *
Our crossing nigh the eve of autumn, and the expected deprivations fierce, a good many wives and children, elders, and even sturdy men chose to stay behind. They took their leave in Leiden or England, awaiting fairer travel, or a colony already built. A full month dragged our keel as Speedwell foundered, ere she, too, dropped away. One hundred souls and two remained, packed in the Mayflower’s hold like butter in a mold.
My father made clear to us that the cost of the journey might be our lives. And yet he begged us come. He would no more again leave us than drown himself. But, the New World! He told us tales of Jamestown, full of Lords indolent beyond measure, who would not deign to lift a hand even were it to bring themselves meat. And the shipwreck! Which left him stranded on that Isle of Devils, though forsooth it was a Paradise, he said. My father told us raucous tales against the music of the alehouse, and quiet tales in the morning by the fire. Even as he spoke the words, I felt the pull of what had captured him, what had taken him away those years before and left us lonely of his fatherhood. That I, a girl, could join him in these adventures was a promise I would not pass by.
But it wasn’t for the women to adventure, was it? After three months on the ship, in cramped bunks and violent crossing, we women sought dry ground as much as they. But men needs must go first, to scout. Those first three weeks in New England the men had great importance scouring the land for habitation. While we women were but once let ashore, and that to do the wash.
In truth, my envy tempered when they staggered from their expeditions, soaked to the bones, icicles dangling from their beards. They had fresh game, and clean air, and stillness beneath their feet. Yet they coughed and hacked with infections from the cold.
My father kept his spirits, though. One day, when the sun shone warm, a great whale came and lay above the water, so close we heard her chuff and smelled her breath. My father showed us children all her parts, from whence came oil for lamps, and baleen for corsets. Mistress Bradford lifted Jasper to the rail. She held him close, her arms around his middle, her cheek against his ear. They whispered such nonsense to each other! Even Elder Brewster smiled, indulgent, kind. We’ll eat that fish for supper! Jasper cried. Or it shall eat us, Mistress Brewster said, pointing at the stretch of its long mouth.
Men rushed about, wishing for a harpoon. Two prepared to try their muskets, to see whether she would stir or no. They could not kill it thus, we knew, but they could do it harm. When the first man gave fire, his musket flew in pieces, both stock and barrel. All about him scrambled to protect themselves. Mistress Bradford hid young Jasper from the flying steel.
The whale, unharmed, gave a snuff and sunk away.
* * *
By December, scarce of us were free from vehement coughs. We had lost two, already, with exceeding many pinned abed. Yet on the sixth day of the month a company of ten men gathered, bent on weeks of exploration. Governor Carver, Master Bradford and my father were among them. It was well o’er the day ere they were ready. Master Bradford strained his studied gentleness, pleading Mistress Bradford’s aid. He begged her haste. But Jasper lay abed with raging fever. She feared to leave his side. The weather being very cold and hard, she asked could they not put off their discovery? He answered, would you have us winter aboard this ship?
She relented for three hours, busy with the rest of us who still had able hands, provisioning and packing. Jasper lay increasing quiet. Approaching even, the company scarce away, Mistress Bradford hurried back in time to witness Jasper breathe his last.
Oh did she wail! We called after Master Bradford. Our voices ‘gainst the wind, he misheard us. A gale rose up to blow the shallop back, but the men rowed on, determined on their own course, disregarding God’s. Two hours they struggled to make the meager furlong and clear the sandy point. Before distance or a bend of trees could hide them, darkness took them from our sight.
All that time Mistress Bradford wailed.
And here it is, my last confession. I brought her broth to calm her, but it was mostly rum, stolen from my father’s stores. She refused the nourishment. I bade her breathe the vapors. Whereupon she drank it whole, and had another. And let her wailing cease.
That night we thought her sleeping, so quiet was her cot. But she, awake, had spent the night in choosing. In the morn she rose, before the others, and did ascend the ladder to the deck. I followed, worried at the rage beneath her calm. She walked direct to where she had with Jasper stood to watch the whale, and paused, and breathed the air. I made to join her. But she, seeing my approach, grasped the rail, and climbed and dropped into the sea.
About the author
Kim Ross lives next to a lake in the woods on the foothills of the Cascade Mountains east of Seattle, Washington, USA. Her work has appeared in New World Review, Vitamin ZZZ, and Whatcom Writes, as well as on stages and screens around Seattle. Her first novel, Deep Roots, Tall Sky, about a Kansas farm girl in 1934, is working its way towards publication.
Kim is currently working on a series of short stories about Constance Hopkins, her 9th great grandmother, and her other ancestors and relatives who sailed on the Mayflower. You can find out more about her work at www.kimrosswrites.com
About the artwork
The illustration is Mayflower in Plymouth Harbor by William Halsall, oil painting 1882. In the collection of Pilgrim Hall Museum, Plymouth, Massachusetts, USA. In the public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.