He kicked off his boots and drew his satchel and spare jacket toward him, folded them under his head for a pillow, and then pulled his traveling cloak and a rug over him. He opened one eye to see that the fire was banked in, and his fish trap was safe, and then he was asleep in moments.
May 1643
Next day John set to work on the fish trap for an hour and set it in the cold, swift-flowing water. The meat from last nights supper stayed in his stomach more comfortingly than porridge, he felt stronger and more competent all day; but the following morning he felt hungrier, as if his body were expecting meat again. He had the soup from the pigeon bones for breakfast and then had it again, thinned down and less satisfying, for his dinner at midday.
In the afternoon he went to look at his fish trap and found a small trout in the keep-net.
Praise God! John said devoutly, inwardly praising himself. He lifted the trap from the river, carefully supporting his trophy, and smacked the squirming little fish on the head. He cleaned it and gutted it. There was not much left of it after he had cut its head and tail off but he set it in the pot with a little water and dried maize flour to make a stock and simmered it for a few moments, and then left it to cool until supper.
These foods became his staple diet. The monotonous blandness of the corn flour as porridge, as vegetable, as sauce and the occasional treat of fish or meat. Slowly, John adapted, and only ate well and with relish in poignant dreams of Lambeth feasts: great dinners at Twelfth Night, rich tables at Easter.
Every day he chopped wood, and went out into the forest to see if he could recognize any of the berries or nuts that Suckahanna had gathered, but the branches were showing nothing more than fresh green leaves and the nuts had all blown down in the winter gales or been eaten by squirrels and mice. The woods were not as friendly to John as they had been to her. Everywhere that she had looked there had been food or tools or medicines or herbs. Everything that John saw was strange.
Every day he chopped wood, and went out into the forest to see if he could recognize any of the berries or nuts that Suckahanna had gathered, but the branches were showing nothing more than fresh green leaves and the nuts had all blown down in the winter gales or been eaten by squirrels and mice. The woods were not as friendly to John as they had been to her. Everywhere that she had looked there had been food or tools or medicines or herbs. Everything that John saw was strange.
After weeks and weeks of this he thought that he had had his fill of strangeness. His father had loved the rare and the unusual and John had inherited that love. Their whole lives were based on the joy of difference: different plants, flowers, artifacts. But now John was in a different world, where everything was strange to him and he felt that perhaps he liked strangeness only against the background of the familiar. He liked the exotic flower when it grew in his English garden at Lambeth. It was harder to admire when it was growing against an exotic tree, under a foreign sky.
Im heartstruck, John said in sudden amazement in the middle of the second month, and a great longing for Lambeth and the children and even for Hester rushed over him so powerfully that he staggered, as if from physical sickness, and had to steady himself with a hand on a tree trunk. God! I am longing for my home. It has been weeks, no, months since I came to live here and I have spoken to no man and seen no woman since the Hoberts left. I miss my home. And, my God, I am lonely.
He turned to look back at the little clearing and, plumb in the center of it, the house as small and as rough as a wooden box made by a thick-handed apprentice. A sense of the minute scale of the house and the enormity of the forest rushed upon John, leaving him breathless and fearful. But Im making my home here, he said stubbornly.
The wind, the massive wind, stirred the tops of the high, strong trees as if the very woods themselves were laughing at the false pride of a man who thought he could make a home among such wildness. John could labor here all his life and never manage to do more than survive. He could never build a house like the one at Lambeth, never make a garden like Oatlands. Those were achievements which took years of labor in a society rich in labor. Take away those riches, the work of many hands and many brains, and a man was like an animal in a wood less than an animal, because every animal in the wood had its place in the scheme of things, food that was suited to it, a home which was right for it, whereas John had to fight to get enough food in this land of plenty, and had to struggle to keep his fire burning to keep his house warm.
A sense of despair as real as darkness swept over him. I could die out here, John thought, but he no longer spoke aloud. The very silence of the woods seemed too great to challenge, it silenced his little voice. I will die out here. Every thought seemed to open a greater gulf beneath his feet. I am making my home here, far from my children, from my wife, from my friends. I am making a place where I am all alone. And sooner or later, by accident or illness or old age, I will die here. I will die alone. In fact, if I fail for just one day, just one day, to get up and fetch water, chop wood, hunt or fish I will die here. I could starve to death before anyone came.
John pushed away from the tree but found that his legs could hardly support him. His sense of loneliness and fear had weakened him. He staggered back toward his house and thanked God there was at least a curl of smoke coming from the chimney, and suppawn in the cooking pot. John felt his throat close at the thought of eating cold porridge again. He fell to his hands and knees and retched. God, my God, he said.
A little saliva dribbled from his mouth. He wiped it on his sleeve. The strong brown homespun of the sleeve was stinking. He noticed it when he brought it to his face. My clothes smell, he said in quiet surprise. I must smell.
He touched his hand to his face. His beard had grown and was matted and dirty, the mustache was long around his mouth. My breath must smell, I am filthy, he said softly. I am so foul that I cannot even smell myself. He felt humiliated at the knowledge. John Tradescant, the apple of his mothers eye, his fathers only heir, had become a dirty, bedraggled vagrant, clinging to the edge of the known world.
He dragged himself to his feet again. The sky seemed to look down on him as if he were a tiny, tiny insect making its arduous way across a massive leaf on a tree in a forest in a country that was too great for any man to cross.
John stumbled to his door and pushed it open. Only in the cramped room could he restore his sense of scale. Im a man, he said to the four rough wood walls. Not a tiny beetle. I am a man. This is my house.
He looked around as if he had never seen it before. The four walls had been made of newly felled green wood, and as the fire heated the room and the weather warmed, the wood had shrunk. John would have to take clay and twigs to patch the gaps. He shuddered at the glimpse of the forest through the cracks of the house walls, as if the wildness outside was seeping in through his house to attack him.
I cant, he said miserably. I cant build the house and find food and wash and hunt and clear the land as well. I cant do it. Ive been here for nearly two months, and all I can do is survive, and I can barely do that. His throat closed again and he thought he was going to retch but instead he spat out a hoarse sob.
He felt the waistband of his trousers. He had thought that, for some reason, his belt had been stretching but now he realized that he was thinner. Im not surviving, he finally acknowledged to himself. Im not getting enough to eat.
At once the tiredness which was now familiar, and the ache in his belly which he had thought was some kind of mild illness, made a new and terrifying sense. He had been hungry for weeks and his hunger was making him less and less competent to survive. He missed his shot more and more often, his stock of logs for the fire was harder to cut every day. He had fallen back on gathering firewood rather than making the effort of swinging an ax. This meant that the wood was drier and burned quicker so that he needed more, and it also meant that the land around the little house was no clearer than it had been when Bertram had come over to help him build his house at the start of their time in the wilderness when they had been confident and laughing.
Spring is here and I have planted nothing, John said dully, holding a fold of his waistband in his calloused hand. The ground is not clear, and I cannot dig. I have no time to dig. Just getting in food and water and fuel takes all my time, and I am tired I am so tired.
He stretched out his hand for his cloak. It was not folded tidily away in the corner of the room any more but left in the corner where he kicked it to one side in the mornings. He wrapped himself in its thick warmth. Hester had bought it for him when he said that he was going away, he remembered. Hester, who had not wanted to come. Hester, who had sworn that the new country was not for men and women who were used to the ease and comfort of town life, that it would suit only farmers who had no chance of doing well in their home country, farmers and adventurers and risk takers who had nothing to lose.
John lay down on the bare earth floor before the glow of the fire and pulled the collar of the cloak up over his face. Although it was morning he felt he wanted to pull the cloak over his head and let himself sleep. He heard a small, pitiful sound, like Frances used to make when she woke from a bad dream in the night, and realized that it was himself, and that he was weeping like a frightened child. The little sound went on, John heard it as if he were far away from his own fear and weakness, and then he fell asleep, still hearing it.
He woke feeling hungry and afraid. The fire was nearly out. At the sight of the gray ash in the grate John leaped to his feet with a gasp of fear and looked out of the open window. Thank God, it was not dark, he had not slept away the whole day. He stumbled outside, the cloak clinging to his feet, making him stumble, and gathered armfuls of wood from his outside store. He tumbled the logs into the grate and prised off the dry pieces of bark. With little twigs he poked the bark into the heart of the red embers and put his head down into the ash and blew, gently, softly, praying that they would catch. It took a long time. John heard himself muttering a prayer. A little flame flickered yellow like a candle, and then went out.