AT FIRST SIGHT: A Novella
Parris Afton Bonds
§§ CHAPTER ONE §§
Was it safe?
Five years before, that frightful, frigid January morning of 1649, both her father’s and brother’s heads had rolled on Whitehall Palace’s chopping block, along with those of King Charles’s and others.
Not waiting to see if her head was next, Lady Evangeline Bradshaw fled England with the family’s remaining gold and silver crowns sewn into her furred muff, cloak lining, and front panel and hem of her petticoat – making anything short of mincing steps practically impossible.
The first ship she could book passage on had been bound, not for the Continent, but, alas, for the Colonies. Yet even here, in this remotest place on earth one could imagine, she did not feel safe. And now she had to be concerned for others, as well.
She barred the Virgin Queen Tavern’s doors, front and back. The inn’s location had appealed to her because the closest settlement, discounting a scattering of Danish blockhouses, Finnish and German farms, and a few tobacco plantations, was some twenty miles south – near the confluence of the South and Brandywine Rivers.
The nearly nine-hundred colonists of New Sweden Company’s Fort Christina were more indulgent when it came to Christmas matters than the Dutch of New Amsterdam – thankfully, 100 miles to the north – and the forbidding and dour Puritans and Pilgrims, even farther north, in the New England colonies.
Surely, that late in the evening no guest would come seeking a room upstairs, all three of which were empty. Outback, Bonnie Charlie, young Rasannock, and Gantu were warmly bedded down in the scullery, and Millie, the milk cow, and the mule Molly were sheltered in their stable stalls.
Upstairs, in her own bedchamber, Evangeline knelt and opened the great red lacquered chest, next to the carved wallpress. Quietly, so as not to disturb her bedchamber’s other occupant, sleeping blissfully, she removed the blanket wrapped objects tucked away at the chest’s bottom.
Almost reverently, she withdrew the wooden nativity set’s figurines and the three gifts – a whittling knife for old Bonnie Charlie; a beaver hat for bald Gantu; and a red hooded cloak for flamboyant Rasannock.
The fur-lined cloak had been hers. But where would she wear such a luxuriant garment these days? The Puritans and Pilgrims to the north would burn it – and her.
Next, with the gifts stored in her basket, she crept downstairs, where she draped both the mantle and the doorways with garlands of holly and ivy and mistletoe. Her father and brother’s executioner had banned these traditional Christmas decorations. More precisely, Oliver Cromwell and his Roundheads had banned Christmas.
In London, soldiers were ordered to patrol the streets and take, by force if necessary, food being cooked for a Christmas celebration. The smell of a roasting goose could land its unfortunate cook in the stocks. Which reminded Evangeline that the brace of partridges Rasannock had returned with earlier that day needed to be skewered on the spit, come dawn.
Plucking the downy feathers had been a tedious and messy task at which her hands had no experience prior to her arrival in the colonies – but a task well worth her effort. A savory smelling partridge roasting on Christmas – best she could probably ever do to thumb her nose at both the bloody Roundheads and Puritans.
She had purchased the ramshackle two-story cabin from a Dane who, goaded by his wife’s scalping, had retreated to his homeland. A year later, with the help of her three, self-proclaimed, male protectors, she had added on the serviceable kitchen. Replete with an oven, its fireplace was large enough to skew an entire deer, and its brick floor she had helped lay.
She tossed another stick into the oven and reclosed its iron door. The cranberry and clove sauce was already thickening in a fire-warmed pan. She still had her dough to set. Up all night she would be, preparing the Christmas dinner.
Taking the tin canister from the cupboard, she ladled out enough flour for the Christmas cake – and paused. No, she had not been mistaken. The clanking of the tavern’s heavy brass knocker – someone was seeking admittance.
The ladle hovered over the ceramic bowl. She could turn the caller away – but the funds of the tavern, empty of lodgers that night, were perilously low. And it was Christmas. Still, who on God’s green earth could be calling that late?
Wiping her flour-dusted hands on her white apron, she crossed the brick floor and opened the kitchen’s half door to the main room. From the stone wall above its fireplace, she took down one of the paired, long pistols and hid it in the limp folds of her skirt.
At one time, that skirt had been extended by flounces of lined and quilted petticoats, their hems decorated with gold braid and trimmed with point de Venise. Her décolletage had been cut extremely low to expose the swell of her maiden’s breasts. Now, a Puritan’s starched white smock and collar shielded those breasts the Roundheads and Puritans considered shameful.
Forever gone for her were the elaborate velvets, satins and silks with their fancy frills, laces, buttons, bows, and buckles. At least, none were visible. But her undergarments – her chemise and pantalettes’ lace and ribbons – in these she took forbidden feminine pleasure.
As it was deemed unseemly for the hair to be shown, hers was usually hidden by a tight-fitting coif, which, at this late hour, she had removed to indulge in the comfort of freedom, also forbidden.
At the opposite end of the kitchen, past the ordinary’s tables, and beyond the staircase, she cautiously approached the heavy iron-strapped front door.