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Show Page 59 meal, setting out trenchers on the board and stirring the porridge in the bake kettle. The porridge, made from Indian corn, would have been tasty with some cream added, but Martin's Hundred as yet had no cow to milk. Walter snorted when he told me that. "Rooked we were," he said. "Paid the Magazine eighty pounds to bring over ten cattle a year ago." "And did they not arrive?" I asked. "Aye, they arrived. Came on the Margaret last December with the settlers for Berkeley's Hundred. But the cape merchant, Abraham Piersey, sold them elsewhere for fifteen pounds each. So we're still waiting for our cattle. Wrote to the adventurers in London we did, so 'spect they'll be sending us more one of these years." At that moment a crash came from the fireplace. It startled me so, I nigh dropped the trencher I held. "The lug pole!" exclaimed Margaret. The pole, on which the pots were hung from pothooks over the fire, had broken through and sent the bake kettle with the remains of the morning's porridge crashing down into the fireplace. The kettle was unharmed, but the lid had fallen away and smashed a pipkin full of water standing near the hearth. As Walter trudged off to cut a new lug pole, I helped Margaret clean up the mess and pick the pieces of charred |
