Flight of the Sparrow (10 page)

•   •   •

M
ary wakes to the realization that she is warm
.
For the first time since the attack. Some time has passed, though she cannot tell if it is minutes or hours. The door flap opens and a young woman enters, carrying an infant strapped to a cradleboard. She sits beside Weetamoo, who puts down her beadwork, gently unwraps the child from the board, folds him into her arms and begins to suckle. Weetamoo and the girl talk in low voices. The sound, combined with the soft suckling of the baby, makes Mary think of music.

When Weetamoo is done suckling, she places the baby in her lap and plays with him for a long time. Mary cannot stop watching. She has never seen a woman treat a child so tenderly. She was taught when she was still a child herself that showing such affection spoils children and endangers their souls, so she has always been careful not to treat her children too gently in public. Yet she recalls the many times she cosseted them in secret, when no one was watching. She knew she was sinning, yet the sweetness of her infants so overwhelmed her that she could not help herself. As she watches Weetamoo, Mary longs to rock a new babe against her breasts once more.

Weetamoo stops playing with the infant and straps him back onto the board. She says something to the girl, who rises, dips a bowl into a small kettle over the fire and hands it to Mary.

It seems to be a stew of some kind—chunks of meat swimming in a thick broth that smells slightly rancid. Mary would not have touched her lips to it only a few days ago, but her hunger is so urgent that she doesn’t even sniff it before she begins scooping it into her mouth with her fingers.

She tries to feed some to Sarah, but the child refuses to swallow. The gruel runs down her chin and stains her shirt and neck a silty brown. “Where is Row?” Sarah whines. “I want to hear Row sing.”

Mary hushes her. “Row is well and safe. I am certain of it.” She thinks suddenly of Joseph. Why has he not rescued them? She feels anger thread into her chest, then rebukes herself. Warriors are waiting to kill him. She must pray, not for her deliverance but for his safety.
Nearly swooning from pain and fatigue, Mary bends her heart toward God and dutifully begs Him to keep Joseph from all harm, to spare him such a trial as hers.

CHAPTER EIGHT

For
a week, Sarah lies insensible in Mary’s lap, burning with fever. Mary watches, terrified, as the wound festers. She knows how quickly such fevers can take a child, and she has no poultices or balms to soothe her. In desperation, she scrapes dirt from the floor, mixes it with her own spittle, and smears it over Sarah’s wound, hoping that it will at least cool her skin. But Sarah only moans and tosses more fretfully. With hand gestures, Mary begs Weetamoo for salves, but the woman ignores her. Mary sits hunched over her daughter, certain that Sarah is dying, and wild with guilt that she can do nothing to save her.

Preoccupied by Sarah’s condition, Mary scarcely notices that the Indians are feeding her. Several times each day, the girl—whom she learns is Weetamoo’s maid, Alawa—sets slabs of flat bread, cups of water, and bowls of gruel into Mary’s hands. When she is too distracted to eat, Alawa tears pieces from the bread, dips them into the stew and presses them to Mary’s lips. She chews, unthinking, like a child. Alawa encourages her with gestures to feed Sarah in the same manner, and Mary does. It seems as if she spends hours
working Sarah’s mouth open with one hand and sliding tiny bits of broth-soaked bread onto her tongue. She spits out at least half of it, but she does manage to swallow some. So Sarah feebly clings to life, while Mary clutches the hope that the Lord will save them both.

She is vaguely aware of the comings and goings of Weetamoo and Quinnapin. She knows they sleep naked at night, curled together under heavy animal skins, Weetamoo’s babe tucked up between them. She sometimes hears him suckling. One night she hears Weetamoo and Quinnapin join together as husband and wife. The sound of their lovemaking sends such a bolt of longing through Mary that it is all she can do not to cry out for Joseph. She burrows deeper under the skins they gave her, hoping to shut out the sounds. She weeps for all she has lost. She wonders if Joseph has fallen into Indian hands and been slain.

•   •   •

A
s Sarah grows more feeble, Mary can do little but hold her. She sits for hours, rocking her, watching Weetamoo decorate belts and skirts with wampum beads. The woman carries herself like a queen. Mary feels oddly diminished in her presence and prays that the Lord will grant Weetamoo a merciful heart.

Instead, Weetamoo rises up like a demon in the middle of the night, pulls Mary from sleep and casts her out of the wetu. Mary pleads with her, begs for mercy, and tells her over and over that Sarah is dying. But Weetamoo’s only gesture of compassion is to throw a blanket over Mary’s shoulders, fold Sarah’s legs and arms inside it, and secure her to Mary’s bosom like a swaddled babe.

It is snowing, a hard stinging snow mixed with sleet that blinds Mary and scrapes her face. Her skirts and cloak swirl around her. Tendrils of smoke curl above the wetus. Everything is gray and white. Mary begins to move along the path. She has no destination, no home. She leaves it to God to guide her. Snow flies into her eyes. When Sarah thrashes against her, Mary shifts her daughter higher
to ease her burden, but Sarah is so heavy she staggers. Mary wonders how far she will be able to walk before she collapses and they both freeze to death.

Dimly, through the streaming snow, she sees a figure. A storm wraith, dark wings flapping and spinning, wild hair etched in white fire.

The figure speaks and Mary sees it is a woman. What she perceived as wings is a blanket. There is no fire but only snow. The woman pats her chin and leans toward Mary so she can be heard over the roar of the wind.
“Quenêke,”
she says.

“Quenêke,”
Mary repeats.

She points to a nearby wetu. When Mary doesn’t move, the woman grips her arm and pulls her inside.

The wetu is filled with sleeping Indians. They stretch out on their platforms and lie clustered on mats around the fire. The air is tangy and hot. Quenêke points to a space near a platform. Mary’s joints feel frozen into their sockets. It is difficult to move even the few feet to the side of the shelter, and even more difficult to push Sarah under the platform and slide down beside her. Quenêke squats, urging haste with small motions of her hands and low grunting sounds. When Mary has settled, Quenêke pulls a heavy bear hide over her and creeps away.

Mary wonders why this stranger has taken her in. Does this mean she is now Quenêke’s slave? Is this strange mixture of cruelty and kindness an Indian custom?
The hide smells of smoke and rancid grease, but it warms her. She lies with Sarah in her arms, her face raw, her mind empty. She tries to pray, but no words form in her mind and her tongue lies still in her mouth.

After a while, Sarah stops moaning, and her breathing becomes ragged. Mary sits up and pulls Sarah into her lap. Her body has become oddly dense, almost too heavy to move. Even as Mary holds her, she feels a dark cold filling the child.

Mary does not release her, even though she knows Sarah is dead. She presses her face into her daughter’s hair and inhales the fragrance of her scalp through the bitter smoke that clings there. She begins to comb the hair with her fingers, pulling the twigs and burrs from the fine yellow strands, smoothing it, braiding it. Only when she finishes does she see that her fingers have trailed streaks of blood into the hair.

Tears come and images float through Mary’s mind: She remembers the terrible cries of Bess Parker after her son was taken from her. She remembers the death of her own firstborn daughter. Remembers the fever, the seizures, the slick hot sheen that covered the tiny body, the thrashing, the shrieks, her own desperation. Nothing at all would soothe the child, not even her breast, which had always calmed her. How angry—how furious—she had been at Joseph and his stern counsel to submit her will to God in Christian resignation. She had wanted none of it. She had wanted to scream and rail at God. She had wanted to curse Him, and to curse Joseph for imparting His cruel requirements.

Now, as she tries to remember little Mari’s face, she cannot, though she can still feel the round head under her palm, the pink skin stretched over the skull, the heat coming up through the fine hair, soft as milkweed. After Mari died in her arms, Mary handed the body to her sister, and could not bring herself to touch the child again.

But Sarah is different. Holding her body brings Mary comfort and solace. She is her last connection to English life. Her hands and arms are fastened to Sarah’s cooling flesh, as if bound there by sailor’s knots. She prays that none of the Indians will wake and discover she is dead. She prays again for strength. Even as she prays, she feels herself drowsing, falling toward sleep, and this time she does not try to prevent it. For there is no longer any reason to stay awake.

•   •   •

S
he dreams it is spring. She is standing on the doorstep of her house, looking across the muddy yard to the barn. The sky overhead is clear but there are low gray clouds in the west. She is
troubled by the sensation that there is something she must do, but she cannot think what it is. She becomes slowly aware that she is all alone. There is no one else about the farm, or walking on the road. There are no birds in the trees, no sound of animals coming from the barn. She looks down at her hands and sees that they are bleeding. The skin has torn away in long strips and hangs from the ends of her fingers.

•   •   •

M
ary wakes, blinking. A thread of light slides through the smoke hole overhead. Her hands hurt and after a moment she sees why: Her fingers are locked around Sarah, who lies on her lap, rigid and cold.

A few feet away a man is snoring. Mary can see the top of his head—a ribbon of coarse black hair—poking up from beneath a deerskin. She sees Quenêke squatting by the fire, fanning the flames with a turkey wing.

Quenêke looks up at Mary. She speaks, but Mary shakes her head—she does not understand. Quenêke’s voice crackles like fire. She points the wing at Sarah.

Mary looks down and sees that her daughter’s eyes are wide-open. She covers them with her hand and draws them gently closed. Sarah’s skin is icy and dry. It is strange to see her so still. The girl was so quick about everything, so eager to learn about the world. And so quickly gone from it. Suddenly Mary is weeping again, surprised that she has any tears left in her.

“She is dead,” Mary cries. “I must bury her.”

Quenêke touches Mary’s shoulders. “Haste,” she says in English. “Go. Weetamoo.”

Mary focuses on the whites of her eyes, her flashing teeth. Fear rises in her, like a hot ember scalding her bowels. She stands and starts to lift Sarah’s body, but Quenêke stops her, braids snapping back and forth as she shakes her head. “Go Weetamoo,” she says.

“Weetamoo?” Mary frowns. “She banished me.”

“It is bad to die in wetu of sachem,” Quenêke says slowly. “It calls bad spirits. You go now. Not give Weetamoo anger.”

“No.” Mary shakes her head. “No. Please, let me stay here.”

It takes several minutes before Mary understands that she has no choice, that when Weetamoo turned her out of her shelter, it was a temporary exile. “Go haste,” Quenêke says, taking Sarah’s body from Mary’s arms and pushing her outside.

•   •   •

W
eetamoo does not seem surprised when Mary steps into the wetu alone. She begins giving her orders, assigning her chores with impatient gestures: She must scrape strings of meat from a smoked deer hide. She must keep the fire burning. She must stir the fibrous stew that fills the iron kettle. Mary’s face burns from the heat though her mind is frozen. She can think of nothing but Sarah. Sarah writhing in her death throes. Sarah’s last breath. Sarah’s body lying in her lap as she sat on the dirt floor of Quenêke’s wetu. An icy despair fills her. Life itself no longer matters
.
She has lost her soul.

Mary knows that grief is a sin. Joseph often preached against it, admonishing the congregation for their attachments.
Do not attach yourself to the things of this earth, but to Heaven alone. ’Tis a sin to place your affection in the flesh, for you belong to the Lord. Forsake your sins, for in sinning you forsake God.
He had lectured her in private, warning her that a mother must not cherish any of her children, for it is too easy to slip into the Devil’s snare of serving them instead of the Lord.

Mary prays as she works. Or tries to, forcing her heart toward God, pleading with Him for mercy. After several hours, mercy comes. Weetamoo sends her to the river for water. On her way, Mary passes Quenêke’s wetu. She cannot keep herself from entering.

Quenêke is cutting a deerskin into laces. Sarah’s body is not in
the wetu. Mary cannot hide her panic. “Where is my daughter? What have you done with her body?”

Quenêke looks up at her and puts down her knife.
“Monchuk,”
she says. “Girl gone.”