Cape Cod (15 page)

That was good, thought Autumnsquam. He pointed again, and the boy said, “Christopher… Hilyard.”

“Christo-pher Hil-yud.” Autumnsquam tried the words.

Then the boy pointed to himself, to the south, and pressed his hands to the side of his head in the sign of sleep.

“He has done that three times,” offered one of the others.

“Sleeps to the south?” Autumnsquam looked toward the land between the creeks. “Nauseiput?”

The boy made the gestures again.

“You sleep tonight with the Nausets.”

At the village, there was great commotion. The women and children scurried from their
wetus
to see the white boy, and one ran off to fetch the men, who were fishing. Autumnsquam sat the boy on a log outside his own
wetu
, and the women and children gathered around in a great circle of curiosity.

But Autumnsquam wanted no welcome. Let this boy be frightened. Let all whites be frightened, for all time. To keep them frightened, Autumnsquam glowered. And as he was a
pinse
, a trusted brave and counselor, the rest of the Nausets did as he did… but for one.

This one had been born in winter and was now old enough to crawl. Like a crab he scuttled from his
wetu
. He stopped at his father’s feet and looked up, then he saw the new face. He had not yet learned to fear strangers, so he smiled.

The white boy smiled back. The baby sat on his fat behind and smiled even wider. The children at the edge of the group smiled, too. And Autumnsquam chewed on the inside of his cheek to keep his own face from warming.

Then the white boy took off his beads and gently placed them around the baby’s neck. And the laughter of the Nausets could be heard on both shores of the Narrow Land.

Christopher stayed three days with the Nausets, exploring, fishing, and playing with Autumnsquam’s little boy. Then his people came for him. They grounded their boat on the flats but would not go up to the village, fearing another fight. Autumnsquam thought that was good, though the Nausets wore no paint and had no plans for war. He sent word to the village, but he and the others stayed on the beach and kept their bows in their hands.

The wind that day was a warm wind, from the southwest, and it carried the stink of the sweated white bodies straight into Autumnsquam’s face. The boy Hil-yud did not smell bad, but the smell from the whites’ canoe was like a great heap of dried seaweed and dog dung drying in the sun.

He could not go closer than the length of three canoes, but there was one amongst them that he sent forward—he whose corn had been taken in the Pamet land seven moons before. And the whites, for all their bad smell, did better than Autumnsquam could have dreamed. They gave a knife as gift and by sign and word, promised to make good for the corn. And they did not smell so bad.

Then, toward sunset, the whole tribe brought the boy through the woods. This was good, thought Autumnsquam, because it showed how many there were of the Nausets, and even if the whites had made a treaty with Massasoit, the Nausets were still to be feared. Sachem Aspinet stopped on the shore and made a sign of peace, then brought forth the boy, bedecked in beads and shells.

Autumnsquam was glad he had met Christo-pher Hil-yud. If the whites were to live there, it was better to know that some whites were good. Then Autumnsquam recognized the man running toward the boy. It was the one he had tried to kill in the winter fight, the one who had tried to kill
him
.

The father embraced his son. He said soft words, then angry words. The boy pointed again toward Nauseiput, and the father embraced him once more. This was good, thought Autumnsquam. Men who could be mad at their sons and glad for them at the same time could not be all bad.

With one arm around the boy, the father went to Aspinet and took out his knife. This made Autumnsquam reach for his tomahawk. But the white man had planned no deceit. He made a gift of the knife to Aspinet, and the Nausets cheered.

Then the boy drew his father toward Autumnsquam. If the white man recognized him, he did not show it. Instead, he offered his hand. Autumnsquam would not embarrass the sachem and so touched his hand to the white’s and gave a smile to the boy. Then the white man, who grew much hair on his face and looked like a scrawny dog, gave Autumnsquam a knife.

In the flashing of the blade, even Autumnsquam forgot the flash of this man’s gun. But to the white man’s smile, he simply nodded. They now owed each other nothing.

The boy, however, owed something to a little Nauset girl, or she to him. She pushed through the crowd and called his name, “Christo-pher,” as if he had taught it to her.

Her name was Amapoo, Autumnsquam’s niece. She still carried much in the way of little girl plumpness, but her womanly parts had begun to bud and would soon blossom. She ran forward and put a necklace of moon snails around Christopher’s neck, causing his face to turn a bright berry red.

Autumnsquam had never seen such a thing in one of his own, but he knew what it meant. And it would not be good, if it came to pass.

iii.

“The prodigal son returns!” cried Simeon Bigelow as the shallop took the breeze.

Jack threw his arms around his son. “Thanks be to God.”

“Prayin’ again, are we?” grunted Ezra Bigelow.

Jack scowled at the figure hunkered in the bow. “This time, God answered.”

“Aye,” said Simeon Bigelow, securing the halyard to a cleat. “ ’Tis God’s gift.”

“ ’Tis God’s gift we were not massacred lookin’ for the young wastrel.” Ezra Bigelow’s face was shadowed, his eyes barely visible beneath the broad-brimmed felt hat.

“ ’Tis the gift of good Indians,” said the boy defiantly. “They treated me like a cousin.”

Ezra raised his head. “Another blasphemer we have, come aboard in savage ornaments.”

“A boy,” said Simeon gently.

“Tell me lad,” growled Myles Standish from the stern. “What made thee run off?”

“I wanted to meet Indians and see if they used our island in summer.”

“What island?” said Standish.

The boy glanced at his father, who gave a slight shake of the head.

“An island thou may have seen in winter?” said Ezra, “whilst ’twas said thou wert… hunting duck?”

“Dammit lad!” Jack Hilyard leaped to his feet so suddenly that the shallop listed. He pulled off his hat and struck his son across the face. “Never run off again. Never!”

The boy’s cheeks reddened again, but he cowered only a bit. Had his father been truly angry, he would have struck with a bare hand.

“Thou worries us into our graves,” Jack Hilyard swung the hat again.

“Sit, Jack,” cried Simeon, “before we turn over.”

“Aye,” said Ezra, “add no lies to thy blasphemy.”

“Lies?”

“The boy run off, for he sees the world through the father’s eyes and sees this… island as a place to ’scape the law and the Word.” Ezra stood and propped himself in the bow, like a preacher in a pulpit. “For breaking our laws, for running away and causing able-bodied men to venture into Indian country, I pledge to the son, and to the father who raised him, that
never
will they have what they seek here.”

Now the boy saw true anger in his father’s eyes, anger shot first at Bigelow, then at the boy himself. His father called him a bloody moron, then tore the necklaces from off his neck and flung them into the sea.

iv.

In the life of the bay, nothing was wasted. The men of Plymouth learned that lesson well the first summer. Massasoit’s Indians taught them to use herring from the bay to richen the soil: plant one herring in every hill of seed, and plant corn, beans, and squash together. The cornstalks grew tall from the herring, the beans twined around the corn, and the prickles on the squash vines grew out to protect them all from the rabbits.

Come autumn, when the oak leaves turned red and the salt marshes gold, they got in a harvest worthy of a great feast. For three days, they partook of the abundance God had given them, whilst offering hospitality to Massasoit and his men. They ate turkey and venison and looked to the second winter with a confidence as great as their faith.

Yet in a few days more, another ship arrived, the
Fortune
, carrying thirty-five more souls, thirty-five more mouths to feed. The ship also carried a new patent, making this settlement legal in the eyes of the Crown. And it carried a letter, more like a cannon shot fired from London four months before.

In it Thomas Weston berated them for keeping the
Mayflower
so long and sending her back empty. He warned that unless they delivered
something
, they could not count on the support of the Adventurers. William Bradford, now governor of the plantation, shot back his own angry letter and, to prove their constancy, had the
Fortune
loaded with cedar planks and pelts.

They survived the second winter. Warm shelters and full bellies went far toward fighting off disease. And in June of 1622 hopes rose with the arrival of the
Charity
and the
Swan
. But those ships brought both bad news and bad seeds.

The French had stopped the
Fortune
on her voyage to England and stripped both her passengers and her cargo. Their good friend Christopher Jones had died of consumption in March. And Thomas Weston had quit the Adventurers.

This meant also that Weston had quit his support of the Plymouth Plantation. But he wrote that he looked to friendly dealings with Plymouth: witness the sixty men he had sent on the
Swan
, charged with building a plantation that he intended himself to join. Weston had given no thought to feeding these sixty, or to their character. Those problems he left for Plymouth.

By fall Weston’s men had moved north about twenty miles to a place called Wessagusset to make a settlement, but they were lazy and improvident and soon needed food. They asked Plymouth for help, so Bradford traveled to the Nausets, who traded corn for English hoes. But by February, Weston’s men had once more sailed themselves into hard straits.

They drank too much, molested Indian women, and were forced at last to hang one of their own for stealing Indian corn. When they made themselves servants to the Massachusetts in exchange for food, they earned the Indians’ contempt.

About this time, the sachem Massasoit took to his deathbed. The Saints dispatched Edward Winslow to his side. Winslow found death to be no more than a massive case of constipation, which he cured with a physic. In thanks, Massasoit gave him warning: not only were the Massachusetts planning to rub out the Wessagusset colony, but Plymouth as well, and their sachem Witawawmut had visited both the Cummaquids and the Nausets to bring them into his alliance.

Though Plymouth had no use for Weston’s men, they could ill afford war. True, they had enclosed their settlement in a great diamond-shaped stockade and at the highest point had built a blockhouse, which served also as meetinghouse, a place strong enough, in Ezra Bigelow’s words, to keep out both Satan and the savage. But there were no more than a hundred fifty in Plymouth, and the Indians still numbered in the thousands.

So Myles Standish led an expedition north to cut off this Indian conspiracy at the root. He took only eight men, all the plantation could spare, but he made certain to take those who were reliable in a fight, Jack Hilyard among them.

For several days, they lived at Wessagusset, in the same miserable conditions as the other whites, and endured the insults of the Massachusetts, who walked freely through the settlement, brandishing knives and taking what they would. The Indians found it most comical that the Plymouth men spent time fixing one of the sorry houses, as though planning to stay. Like goodwives, the Plymouth men swept and cleaned, put shutters on the windows, and even built a strong new door.

On the third evening, Myles Standish and Jack Hilyard were sitting together on a stump when the one named Witawawmut came into the village. He was tall and muscular and wore his hair in long plaits that fell to his shoulders. He wanted a man to gut fish, and there was one here who did this in exchange for corn.

There was bad blood between Standish and Witawawmut from their first meeting in a Cummaquid village. Witawawmut had contemptuously called Standish a midget, and Standish had nearly killed him. Now the Indian went past as though Captain Shrimp—a name used only behind Standish’s back—were no more dangerous than the stump he sat upon.

Witawawmut called several times and finally spied his man asleep under a tree. He cast a look at Standish, then pulled aside his breechclout and pissed into the man’s face.

For all the bad temper in his red beard, Standish knew the way to bide his time. He whispered the word “tomorrow” to Jack Hilyard and smiled at Witawawmut.

The next day, Standish invited Witawawmut, his partner Pecksuout, and their two retainers into the house for a parley. He stationed four men outside, while Stephen Hopkins, John Billington, and Jack Hilyard waited inside.

The Indians seemed to fear nothing. These whites were unarmed, and how much more dangerous could they be—even Standish—than the craven beggars and scratchers who had been there for six months?

Jack Hilyard sat at the table in the middle of the room, in a shaft of light that fell through one of the little windows. Beneath the table, he held Standish’s own snaphance. He did not like a bit of this. After the First Encounter, he had found the Indians to be honest and worthy in all their dealings. But only the strong survived. That much he was certain of. And he now had a new wife in Plymouth. To protect her and the babe in her belly, he would kill all the Indians to Narragansett Bay if he had to.

As Witawawmut entered, Jack pulled back the hammer and felt the flint scrape against his thumbnail.

Standish spoke a few words to the Indians. At the last of them—“We wish only to know how we may be friends”—the door was barred from the outside. Men at each window slammed and barred the new shutters, and the room fell into riot.

Standish snatched Pecksuout’s own knife from around his neck and stabbed him in the heart. Jack Hilyard pulled the snaphance from under the table and killed Witawawmut with a deafening shot. One retainer threw himself at the door. Billington pulled him back and broke his neck with a single blow. The fourth surrendered, but it did him no good.