Free Riverbreeze: Part 1 by Ellen E. Johnson

promising fifty acres of land for each
paying passenger, and since their uncle had paid passage for
himself, his wife, his two young daughters and two servants, he had
received three hundred acres of free land. And since he also had
money of his own, he had been able to purchase additional adjoining
land. So he had decided to sail to Virginia with his agreeable
family and start a life there, leaving Bernard with the family
business.
    The girls had never known how abandoned and
lost their father had felt. They had only been toddlers, but even
as they grew, Bernard had never shown that side of himself to his
daughters. It wouldn’t have been proper for them to see any
weakness in him. And it also wouldn’t have been proper to reveal to
them that he wasn’t very adept at continuing the business on his
own. Despite the fact that he had been a brilliant craftsman who
could work silver and gold into magnificent pieces of jewelry and
tableware, he just hadn’t had the keen business sense that his
brother had had.
    Unfortunately what he did show to the girls
was contempt of their uncle, blaming all his troubles on his older
brother, not admitting that he, alone, was the one to blame. For he
was the one who liked to live high off the hog and indulge in drink
too often, not Francis. And he was the one who allowed the business
to decline year after year, leaving him no choice but to take
advantage of the common practice of goldsmiths acting like banks.
People would deposit their money with him; he would give them a
receipt for the gold in the form of a note promising to pay them
back on demand, but instead of saving the money for them, he would
spend it, eventually using money from one person to pay another.
When less and less customers came to deposit their money with him,
he found himself having to borrow money from other sources and
eventually panic and despair set in. But the girls had never been
allowed to see that side of their father, only to hear the
disparaging words he spoke about his brother.
    Nevertheless, mounting debts hadn’t stopped
him from showering the girls with whatever they wanted. The guilt
hadn’t let him. When the girls had been three years old, their
mother had died trying to give birth to the son that Bernard had
always yearned for, a horribly deformed baby that thankfully hadn’t
lived more than a few minutes. He had known he shouldn’t have
gotten his wife pregnant again, the birth of the twins had
compromised her health, but he just hadn’t been able to help
himself just like he hadn’t been able to stop himself from
borrowing and spending, borrowing and spending. Bernard had gone
further in debt believing that one day things would turn around and
get better. But they never had. Additionally, foreign craftsmen
settling in the district west of Cheapside who made counterfeit
jewelry much to the annoyance of the Goldsmith’s Company also
greatly contributed to his decline.
    The girls also never knew that Francis had
written often, offering help and inviting Bernard to join him in
Virginia and become partners once again, but Bernard had been too
stubborn and jealous; and he would never forgive Francis for
leaving the family business. And because of his severe jealousy and
anger at his brother, he had constantly badmouthed Virginia and any
man who went there to get rich as a tobacco planter and live among
the savages.
    Bernard had told the girls most of the men
who went to Virginia were criminals or beggars and blighters; that
they flocked to the new land to escape the law and then when they
got there they either sold themselves as indentured servants or got
their land by some other illicit means. Every day the girls had
been led to believe that Virginia was a most uncivilized place and
not fit for high-class citizens like themselves.
    Lies, all lies.
    But despite all this, Bernard had put it into
his will that upon his death, if the girls weren’t married and
living with their husbands, they would go