Chapter 7
April 1635
“Dear Mother…” Margaret de Beauchamp chewed on the end of her pen, a wooden stick with a metal nib that just barely held the ink in its pin-hole reservoir. She tapped it on a waste paper, then scratched out a few more words on the dainty, pale blue pages that had been a travel gift from their neighbor in Barlaston, Lady Pierce. “I’m safe and well. This letter will not reach you until after the Meadowlark returns to Liverpool, but I am keeping my word to write every day to you. Our journey southward was unremarkable. Thank you for the anise sweets. Hettie hid them from me as a surprise until we were aboard and settled. I’m not certain how long the voyage will take, but the weather is fine. The captain hopes the sunshine will continue at least a few days.”
What more was there to say? She had written almost the same for the last few days, and the stack of paper grew apace. It would be quite a journal by the time she reached her destination, albeit a sadly repetitive one. She couldn’t voice her inward concerns about what lay ahead of her, as well as what lay behind her.
After her visit to London the previous spring, she had told only her father about the bargain she had struck with Harry Lefferts. At first, he had been delighted with the sum of three hundred pounds, which had satisfied the tax burden on the manor and the woolens produced by their flocks and weavers, then the two of them realized that Margaret had struck a devil’s bargain. Between them, they had concocted a fairy tale of a windfall from a noble benefactor. When friends pushed for more details, they offered apologetic shrugs to explain their silence. Such a boon was not unknown, and their friends didn’t want the de Beauchamps to suffer repercussions should the secret benefactor become known.
Margaret assured him that no connection could be made between the disappearance of His Majesty’s “guests” from the Tower and Margaret’s visit to an East End tavern. Master Bywell and his friends had been well paid for their silence. They did not talk to strangers about a pair of carts and two days’ use of a pair of barges. She prayed that none of them would even countenance reporting a rumor that the employer of their employer had played a role in treason against the crown, even nearly a year after the event. Margaret’s stomach turned at the terrible stories she had heard about torture and execution for such perpetrators. She knew that humble men would not be accorded comfortable quarters in the Tower, but strung up on Tyburn Hill for the amusement of the mob. She and her father, however, would not escape humiliation as well as bankruptcy before being dispatched. The sight of the headman’s block in the yard at the center of the Tower played a prominent role in her nightmares.
The hearty cries of the sailors going about their tasks distracted her into looking out of the window of irregular, wavy glass set into the door of the captain’s cabin where she had taken refuge. Her quarters, such as they were, were in a small chamber belowdecks that she shared with her servant Hettie and a massive chest containing pistols, balls, wadding, and shot for the two swivel guns mounted aboard the merchant ship bearing her towards the Germanies. They hadn’t a window there, but they could have pulled open the port for air. Should the Meadowlark have been threatened by pirates, she and Hettie would have been evacuated even farther below decks, into the noisome and cramped crew quarters and guarded there, among the hanging hammocks and cargo, until danger passed. She never went down there at other times. The smell was worse than a barnyard: dung from the animals mixed with the sweat of unwashed sailors’ bodies, pitch, lamp oil, rotting fish, and a hundred other odors. Margaret’s eyes watered every time she went past a ship’s ladder. She shook her head and stared off into space to compose the next line in her letter.
Her brother James, his face ridiculously distorted by the glass, appeared at the door and waved. She waved back, but not before he disappeared again. Margaret laughed. James was ship’s lieutenant on the Meadowlark, but primary negotiator to find buyers for their goods when the ship made harbor. Young he might be to take the position of a ship’s lieutenant at eighteen, but he was his father’s son and his sister’s brother. The Meadowlark was forty percent owned by the de Beauchamps, and someday would be his own to captain. If. If all went well, and the family suffered no more downturns. Her journey was intended to help prevent the current threat.
James’ light brown hair, a twin to hers, was scraped back in a queue bound with leather ties and pitch, as most of the sailors wore theirs. He had told his family, with great glee, how the boiled pine tar helped keep down vermin.
“The ticks just fall off and die when they touch it,” he had explained over dinner, his hands imitating the insects going belly-up. Their mother had insisted that she was going to faint at the mention of vermin, but that was her response to anything that made her even the least bit queasy.
Thinking of that, Margaret was glad in that she took after her father’s side of the family. The de Beauchamps had first come to England in the train of William the Conqueror. Her first ancestor in this country was Guillaume, Sieur de Beauchamp, who captained a ship of soldiers and engineers, and had been given a small manor in the Sussex after the war ended. The family stories claimed Guillaume could stand at the bow of a storm-tossed ship and never feel the bucking waves.
Lucky for her that both she and Hettie proved immune to sea-sickness. The other passengers for Hamburg, a Dutch merchant and his wife, had spent the entire journey so far in the junior officers’ cabin, heaving up even the least bites of food or sips of water. Hettie had kindly helped to nurse them, as their manservant seemed worse than useless without cookshops to procure viands or apothecaries to mix soothing draughts. Margaret spared a moment’s thought for her mother, for whom she was the apothecary to hand when such was needed. Poor Mother!
The rest of the ship’s complement consisted of sailors, deck hands, and the three officers: James, the lieutenant; First Mate Owen Latimer, James’ superior officer; and Master Adam Forest, captain of the Meadowlark and a minor partner in a consortium of merchants, including Margaret’s father, Sir Timothy, which owned the ship and a few small concerns both on the continent and in Great Britain. There was a second lieutenant, but he had remained behind in Liverpool to recover from a fever. The Meadowlark also played host to twenty-two Irish mercenaries who were on their way to offer their services to the United States of Europe. They were friendly fellows, who had paid for part of their passage by helping out on the ship. They “dossed down,” as James put it, with the ordinary crew, but spent their free time in the evenings playing music on deck, drinking, and gossiping like a flock of goodwives. They had very much adopted Hettie as their muse, and sang songs that made the girl blush. Margaret, they treated like a precious votive statue. She rather envied her maidservant the easy interaction with the bluff (and some very handsome) soldiers with their lilting voices and easy attitude.
The noise outside settled down to the usual buzz of conversation among the sailors and the thump-swish of the mop or paintbrush on the endless maintenance of a ship. Ships were like horses. They ate their heads off whether they were needed for a task or not. Margaret sighed. She wondered whether her family would have to sell their interest in it after this journey or whether they could keep it. All depended upon the kindness of no longer strangers, but friends. She had a tremendous favor to ask. Again.
Almost a year had passed since her memorable visit to London. None but Hettie and Percy, who had remained behind at home, knew all the details of her connection to the daring and much storied escape from the Tower by the Americans and most of the yeoman guards, not to mention other prisoners like the dastardly Oliver Cromwell and the disgraced Thomas Wentworth.
She still felt a tingle of excitement when she thought of Harry Lefferts, the dashing and handsome agent who had enlisted her aid, and put into her hands the means to rescue her family’s estates from being seized for taxes. Not that she would have welcomed him as husband or lover, but he was so unlike any other man she had ever known. She had described him to her mother, who sighed deeply as though she was watching a romantic play. Harry had the confidence and daring of the Devil, Mother had said, but with a shake of her head and a rueful smile. And the generosity of an angel, Margaret thought but didn’t say. She knew that her friend Rita Simpson had told him exactly what sum the de Beauchamps needed, and he’d had it handed over without ceremony.
In June of 1634, on a chance that Rita had returned safely to Magdeburg, Margaret had written to her in care of Government House. To her delight, Rita wrote back, her news couched in terms that Margaret understood, but would be incomprehensible gossip to anyone who intercepted it. She was not in Magdeburg, which she abbreviated as M., but in Ingolstadt with her husband, Tom, who had been stationed there, a city that held at least a few merchants from every trading nation in Europe. She gave a new address to which letters could be sent without problem.
The two of them had carried on a warm correspondence since then. Americans were still not welcomed in England, so Rita had offered Margaret an open invitation to visit Magdeburg, promising to introduce her to many more “friends” (in other words, Americans) and show her wonders beyond a flashlight. Margaret still kept that hidden away in an embroidered pocket held by tapes underneath her skirts.
With her father’s blessing, she had written, in obscured language, profuse thanks for the gold. What she had done in exchange amounted to so little. Rita assured her that the favors were more than equivalent—in fact, she held that Margaret’s contribution far outweighed Harry’s. Margaret was often frustrated by having to communicate in ciphers, but letters could be and often were intercepted and read, maybe even copied, long before they could reach the recipient. As the child of a merchant, she knew that spies were everywhere, in every field of endeavor. Information had as much currency as any coin or item.
But much of their letters were friendly missives full of family gossip and notes about everyday life. Margaret sent anecdotes and funny stories of personalities of the people of the manor, and how they celebrated holidays and feast days. Rita began to teach her basic phrases in Amideutsch, the combination language that the Americans and native Germans used to communicate. Margaret treasured her letters. She told her family that Rita was merely someone she had met in London, like Lady Ann. Once she invoked the name of her noble friend from the north, her mother and sisters assumed Rita was a wealthy Englishwoman who was married to a landsknecht or a higher rank in the Germanies and traveled hither and yon, and had a brother of high rank in government service. Only her father, and now James, knew the truth.
She sighed and blew on the ink of her letter. One of the adages that Rita had quoted in a letter had become Margaret’s newest motto: no good deed goes unpunished. Having been gifted the sum to rescue the family estates for one quarter, Sir Timothy had thrown himself with the best of goodwill into managing the wool trade to make certain they would never again have to rely on the kindness of others. They sold everything that the weavers could make, and shipped fleeces overseas for slightly more than it cost to ship them. Net profit was better than no profit. But he, and Margaret, could see another shortfall in the not-too-distant future.
The winter had been a wet one, and they lost many lambs. Numerous sheep had also fallen ill with the foot-fell, an infection that damaged their hooves. Sheep were distressingly delicate with regard to their health, and the shepherds were frantic trying to keep their charges alive. Their efforts were on the largest part successful, but the recovering sheep’s pelts reflected their wintertime illness. The shearing had produced thinner fleeces than usual, hence the income from the flocks was smaller than expected. The Weavers’ Guild began to talk about taking action against the de Beauchamps, and even moving to other districts to ply their trade if their wages were not paid in full.
Sir Timothy had pleaded with them to be patient. He did the best he could to make do, yet it seemed no matter how many leaks he plugged in the family accounts, another one sprang into being. He began to entertain offers for some of their land, until both Margaret and James pointed out that it would be like scooping away his underfooting until none was left, and the family would have no income whatsoever. Another appeal to the crown had no way of succeeding, since the Earl of Cork was still firmly ensconced in Whitehall, and the king showed no interest in ruling.
Again, they found themselves in the position of promising funds that they had not yet earned with no hope of ever catching up again. Something needed to be done.
A recently received letter from Rita Simpson put an idea into Margaret’s head. She remembered Rita’s kindly offer to have her visit, as well as the possibility of introducing her brother to the Prime Minister of the USE purchasing cloth for uniforms, and sent a subtly worded missive in reply suggesting she would like to see Magdeburg and ask the advice of the up-timers, a word she had only learned since encountering Rita in the Tower.. She didn’t want to sound as though she was begging, though her heart was in her boots when she handed off the letter to a merchant who was taking ship from Liverpool for London two weeks from then, and onward to the continent.
To her relief and delight, Rita was thrilled to be able to host her young friend. From her return letter, Margaret saw that the American understood her plight all too clearly, and was again willing to help in whatever way she could. Lady Mailey was abroad, but promised on her next journey home to set aside the books for Margaret to read, and perhaps even to borrow. Rita was still in Ingolstadt, but if Margaret could tell her when she wanted to visit, Rita would be happy to make a trip home to meet her, and—Margaret could hardly believe such an honor—host her in the Presidential Palace.
She had brought the notion to her father. Sir Timothy was red-faced with shame at having to rely upon the kindness of strangers. Margaret did not want to hurt his pride further than it already had been damaged, but both knew it was the most likely avenue to keep the manor intact. Hundreds of years had the de Beauchamps brought quality woolen cloth to market. Both of them hated to think that his would be the final stewardship.
Her father argued that the journey would be perilous. Margaret argued that Rita had promised her safety from Hamburg onward and back again. She had so many opportunities awaiting her in the USE. The promised books on weaving would be at her disposal. She had paper in plenty sealed into an oilcloth package so she could copy details down for the use of the guild. Some of the master weavers were enthusiastic about seeing into the future, while others condemned anything to do with Grantville and the Americans as coming straight from the Devil. Margaret suspected that once the details were put before their faces, the weavers would forget their misgivings. Anything that gave the Barlaston guild a leg up over their competitors in other towns was not to be scorned. Sir Timothy still refused. But when James promised that he would escort Margaret safely, Sir Timothy finally gave his consent.
Her mother was less easily persuaded, but Margaret had dropped the lofty titles of her new friends copiously into conversation, reminding her that Rita and her brother were people of note. Mother was worried about her safety, and whether Margaret was sufficiently well trained not to embarrass the family among nobility. Lady Pierce had taken umbrage at that thought, as she herself had trained Margaret to appear in the court of St. James. At last, her mother gave permission, and Margaret had made arrangements to go.
She signed the letter of the day to her mother, noting with dismay how brief it was, and folded it up to seal with one round of wax and the carnelian ring that her father’s mother had bequeathed to her. The carved bezel had the image of a sheep with a bell around its neck. Tucking the letter into her box with the others, she brought out a book bound in black calfskin and embossed with the dullest possible title imaginable to her: Mathematical Proofs of Geometry and Trigonometry. All of the ship’s officers had seen her perusing it, and teased her a bit about becoming a scholar. She was, indeed, attempting scholarship, but it was Rita’s letters on the Magdeburg language she was studying, not the means of calculating angles. Each phrase had been written out in both the Amideutsch and transliterated syllable by syllable into Rita’s American English. “Danke,” she whispered, careful that no one else was near enough to hear her. “Danke schoen.”
She hoped fervently she could make herself understood in the newest part of the Old World. Not long ago, she had met a Frenchman at one of Lady Pierce’s dinner parties. She tried out the language as imparted by her teacher, and was embarrassed to discover that her tutor had no ear for the accent, and her pronunciations caused the well-dressed foreign gentleman to purse his lips together to stop from laughing. Rita would be kind, she knew, but who could speak for the others she might meet? Best to grow a thick hide and prepare as best she could. Her pride was going to suffer enough as it was. James could speak the German tongue as well as a number of others with whom the Meadowlark traded, and had a few words of Amideutsch, but she couldn’t steal his time away from his duties except during meals.
Her last instructions from Rita were as strange as the words in the new language. “Take the steam tug,” the American had written. “There will be a ticket waiting for you.”
Hettie came into the cabin bearing a pitcher and a plate. Margaret had to jump up to hold the door open so her maidservant could enter. Hettie found an empty spot on the table to place her burden down. Her face was flushed red.
“Are you well?” Margaret asked her.
“Ah, it’s those Irishmen,” Hettie said, looking righteously indignant. “They’re incorrigible.”
“They appreciate a pretty girl,” Margaret said, and watched Hettie’s cheeks dimple. But she kept her stern demeanor.
“Well, they daren’t flirt with you, and Frau de Kuiper has been ill this entire time, so they’re not overburdened with choices.”
“Do not denigrate yourself,” Margaret said. “Isn’t Oliver Mason still calling upon you?”
Now Hettie blushed in truth. That tall young man had definitely been appearing regularly at the kitchen door of the manor house on the maid’s days off. Margaret favored her with an indulgent smile. She enjoyed a good love story. And it helped to pass the time to have appreciative gentlemen paying attention to oneself.