“Leaving aside tropes and metaphors, Sir Christopher, may we ask what relation the gentlewoman we found at your house sustains toward yourself?”
“She is my cousin, my housekeeper, my poor little friend. Ah, indeed, gentlemen, you may leave her alone with no fear but she will suffer enough both for her own peccadillos and mine, since those gloomy bigots of the Bay have seized and hold her close prisoner, with low diet, and questionings like those of the Holy Office, day by day.”
And the man’s voice took on so genuine a tone of pain and fear as he thought upon his helpless companion that even Brewster forbore to press the subject further, and Bradford not unkindly inquired,—
“And why didst thou flee from this poor paradise of thine?”
“I heard by my friendly Indians, the same who afterward told me that Mary was a prisoner, that there was mischief plotting against me in the council chamber at Boston, and one fine morning when I saw a boat filled with tipstaves and bum-bailiffs crossing the river half a mile or so from my house”—
“Neponset the Indians call it,” murmured John Alden; and Gardiner nodded good-humoredly.
“Ay, so they do, yet at that moment I tarried not to discover if Winthrop’s men had learned its name as well as its navigation, but, throwing my shot-pouch and powder-flask around my neck, thrusting my compass into one pocket and a full flask into the other, I bade my poor little cousin good-by, and well armed, as you may be assured, I plunged into the forest, and set out for the New Netherlands, some sixty or seventy leagues to the southwest of Boston Bay.”
“They thought you would try to reach Piscataqua, where Hilton and others are seated. Church of England men, they, and more of your own fashion.”
“Why, of course they so thought, Master Governor, and that is why I went not thither; nor did I seek to come here because I felt myself in need of some air less pure and less attenuate than that which circles round a conventicle; I pined for the company of ordinary mortals like myself.”
“You hardly reached the New Netherlands, however,” suggested Bradford dryly.