The Heart's Highway: A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century

by Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman

I hastened on my way to Barry Upper Branch, where was the rendezvous, and on my way had to pass the house where dwelt that woman of strange repute, Margery Key, and it was naught but a solidity of shadow beside the road except for a glimmer of white from the breast of her cat in the doorway. But as I live, as I rode past, a voice came from that house, though how she knew me in that gloom I know not.

"Good speed to thee, Master Wingfield, and the fagots that thou didst gather for the despised and poor shall turn into blessings, like bars of silver. That which thou hast given, hast thou forever. Go on and fear not, and strike for liberty, and no harm shall come nigh thee." As she spoke I saw the bent back of the poor old crone in the doorway beside her cat, and partly because of her blessing, and partly because, as I said before, whether witch or not, she was aged and feeble, and ill fitted for such work, I leapt from my saddle and gathered her another armful of fagots, and laid them on her hearth. I left the old soul shedding such tears of gratitude over that slight service and calling down such childish blessings upon my head that I began to have little doubt that she was no witch, but only a poor and solitary old woman, which to my mind is the forlornest state of humanity. How a man fares without those of his own flesh and blood I can understand, since a man must needs have some comfort in his own endurance of hardships, but what a woman can do without chick or child, and no solace in her own dependency, I know not. Verily I know not that such be to blame if they turn to Satan himself for a protector, as they suspected Margery Key of doing.

I rode away from Margery Key's, having been delayed but a moment, and the quaver of her blessings was yet in my ears, when verily I did see that which I have never understood. As I live, there passed from the house of that ne'er-do-well next door, which was closed tightly as if to assure folk that all therein were sound asleep, a bright light like a torch, but no man carried it, and it crossed the road and was away over the meadows, and no man whom I saw carried it, and it waved in the wind like a torch streaming back, and I knew it for a corpse candle. And that same night the man who dwelt in that house was slain while pulling up the tobacco plants.

I rode fast, marvelling a little upon this strange sight, yet, though marvelling, not afraid, for things that I understand not, and that seem to savour of something outside the flesh, have always rather aroused me to rage as of one who was approached by other than the given rules of warfare rather than fear. I have always argued that an apparition should attack only his own kind, and hath no right to leave his own battlefield for ours, when we be at a disadvantage by our lack of understanding as to weapons. So if I had time I would have ridden after that corpse candle and gotten, if I could, a sight of the bearer had he been fiend or spook, but I knew that I had none to lose. So I rode on hard to Barry Upper Branch.

There was an air of mystery about the whole place that night, though it were hard to see the use of it. Whereas, generally speaking, there was a broad blazon of light from all the windows often to the revealing of strange sights within, the shutters were closed, and only by the lines of gold at top and bottom would one have known the house was lit at all. And whereas there were always to be seen horses standing openly before the porch, this night one knew there were any about only by the sound of their distant stamping. And yet this was the night when all mystery of plotting was to be resolved into the wind of action.

I entered and found a great company assembled in the hall, and all equipped with knives for the cutting of the tobacco plants, and arms, for the militia, as was afterwards proved, was an uncertain quantity. One minute the soldiers were for the government, when the promises as to their pay were specious, and the next, when the pay was not forthcoming, for the rioters, and there was no stability either for the one cause or the other in them.

There was a hushed greeting from one or two who stood nearest—Sir Humphrey Hyde among them—as I entered, then the work went on. Major Robert Beverly it was who was taking the lead of matters, though it was not fully known then or afterward, but sure it can do no harm at this late date to divulge the truth, for it was a glorious cause, and to the credit of a man's honour, if not to his purse, and his standing with the government.

Major Beverly stood at the head of the hall with a roll of parchment in his hand, wherefrom he read the names of those present, whom he was dividing into parties for the purpose of the plant-cutting, esteeming that the best plan to pursue rather than to march out openly in a great mob. Thus the whole company there assembled was divided into small parties, and each put under a leader, who was to give directions as to the commencement of the work of destruction.

My party was headed by Capt. Noel Jaynes, something to my discontent, for the hardest luck of choosing in the world to my mind is that of choosing a leader, for the leader is in himself a very gall-stone. Never had it pleased me to follow any man's bidding, and in one way only could I comfort myself and retain my respect of self, and that was by the consideration that I followed by my own will, and so in one sense led myself.

When at last we set forth, some of us riding, and some on foot, with that old pirate captain to the front hunched to his saddle, for he never could sit a horse like a landsman, but clung to him as if he were a swaying mast, and worked his bridle like a wheel with the result of heavy lunges to right or left, I felt for the first time since I had come to Virginia like my old self.