Letter from John Nightingale, at Southampton, to Zeal Beester of Hawkridge Estate, near Bedgebury, Hampshire. October 1639.
Sweetest Zeal – My messenger stands with outstretched hand. My ship is spreading its wings. I would tear out my heart and send it if I could. In its place must come mere dogged, struggling words. I want no mistaking. I meant what I said. I will stay true to you. If you now, or ever, regret your own vow to me, I beg you to tell me at once.
Exile is kinder than the block, for leaving can be undone while death cannot. So, farewell forever, England. But our finite parting, though scarcely bearable, must be bridged by passionate hope.
To pay my passage so suddenly, and with my lands and modest fortune now forfeit to the Crown, (I still swear that I am no traitor!) I was forced to sell myself as indentured labour to a M. Etienne Baulk, tobacco farmer on the island of Nevis for the usual term of seven years. Seven years. These are not beyond us to survive – a sea captain and his wife, or a soldier’s family, often endure as much. On release from servitude, I am promised ten pounds – a fair beginning for the fortune I mean to make for us in the West Indies. When I can be sure of a life safe for a woman, I will send for you. I beg you, write to me often. To know that you are there, and love me, will give me strength to do whatever I must to ensure that we can be together again.
Oh, my beloved girl, my other self – though writ in a somewhat smaller hand – keep safe. And keep faith in me, who by the Grace of God, will be your husband—John.
Post scriptum Think of me whenever you see that cursed cat which still has leave to occupy your bed, and remember who gave him to you. I kiss your eyes, and must stop there with my pen but not in my thoughts.
Philip Wentworth stepped, unsuspecting, out of the tack room into the quiet grey autumn dawn of the day that would change the rest of his life. A pleasing smell of polished leather and horse clung to his frayed, old-fashioned clothes after his night on a straw mattress among the harnesses and saddles. The world still slept. He stood for a moment listening to the hush. He might have been the only man alive and he liked it that way.
Then a drowsy blackbird sang a single muted note. Another replied. A thrush interrupted. Sparrows disagreed. Suddenly, voices in every tree, every bush, every tall tussock of grass joined the clamour until the air vibrated with their exuberant racket.
He watched the quick flicks of movement. His ear picked out a late chiff-chaff calling its own name, the repeated song of the thrush, the mellow, heart-breaking fluting of a blackbird. Then the churr of a white-throat, and the warbles of robins.
It was a trick he had learned, of paying close attention to every small detail of life. If he gripped hard enough onto the observations and sensations of each moment, he could haul himself hand over hand through the day without having to remember.
He set off across the corner of the stable yard with a sack slung over his shoulder, carrying a fishing pole stout enough to hold a twelve-pound tench. As on every other day, he meant to fish.
At the shadowed dung heap behind the horse barn, he leaned his pole against the dung cart, took up a fork left leaning against the brick wall of the barn and began to turn over the steamy clods. From time to time, his stocky figure leaned forwards to pick out the pale squirming maggots which had been