Raleigh's Page

1 Winding the Spring Stillwell Farm, Devon, 8 April 1584 Mr. Raleigh-- As you've heard, Andrew will be twelve next birthday. He is strong, healthy, tall for his age, steady. He has good teeth. He can read and speak English, Latin and French. He knows numbers and writes a fair hand. He finishes school this spring. If you accept him for service, according to custom you will feed him at your own table and furnish him with the habiliments of a gentleman. He will be trained to ride, fight, hawk, and conduct himself according to the fashion. On his sixteenth birthday you will make him a gift of L4 in gold and the clothing, books, instruments, and items of daily use then in his possession. I will deliver him to Durham House this month end. Regards from your friend, John Saintleger Andrew was eleven, tall for his age, hair like wheat stubble, hazel eyes, big front teeth he'd not yet grown in to. His smile was eager and unafraid. He was wiry from farm work and managing horses. Helping his father build and repair around the farm, he'd learned carpentry. He liked the tools his father had taught him to use, their shapes and edges, what he could do with them. He and the brother who'd been sent to Bristol had built a tree house together, a fort they'd slept in sometimes and stood off neighbor boys' attacks with acorns and rotten fruit. Andrew had thought he might end up a carpenter. Then came the night his father asked him to hold up clearing the table after dinner. "You and I are going up to London together as soon as you finish school," he said raising his eyebrows and beginning a smile. "Listen"-- and he read aloud his letter. Until that moment Andrew had no idea of his father's plan. His heart raced as he listened. An introduction to Walter Raleigh was the most valuable gift his father could make this son. Raleigh was a star at court! Andrew's teacher, Mr. Tremayne, said Mr. Raleigh was for America, exploring, finding gold, and settling English people in the New World! Standing before his map day after day, arms waving, dark hair flying, his voice urgent, Teacher Tremayne had wound the New World spring in his boys, calling them to name rivers, winds, sea-lanes and islands. He'd drilled them so often they could draw that map in their sleep. Their nickname for him was "Maps". He was only a few years older, sent down from Cambridge without graduating because of some prank. Andrew and the others had sat quivering like a pack of eager dogs panting to go for the game their teacher hunted as Tremayne jabbed his map, a fine spray of his spit caught in the sunlight as he exclaimed, "There boys! There sits America, waiting for you!" Tremayne held out his open hands as if making a gift. "At college we read Richard Eden's Travels," he said. "He called the New World Eden: Gold, pearls, deep soils, trees taller than steeples and almost as large around, men's coats made of yellow and blue feathers, healing plants, furs, crops of corn they get with little effort. "And this boys!" he whispered. "No landlords fattening on us with their rents, rules, and leases; no sheriffs snatching up fees and fines; no church you must attend, no priest to pay!" "He could get in trouble if Mr. High Sheriff heard him talk like that," Andrew's desk mate whispered. "Aye," he replied, "but in America there's no High Sheriff. It's all free and open!" "And there's gold!" his neighbor said with a nudge. "That's what I'd go for!" The boy's whole name was Andrew Saintleger. "Salinger" is how they say it in Devon. He was the youngest, so he'd inherit nothing: the farm with its leases and debts would go to his oldest brother. His father could have put him to anything. His middle brother had been sent to clerk for a childlArmstrong, Alan W. is the author of 'Raleigh's Page ', published 2007 under ISBN 9780375933196 and ISBN 0375933190.