Flight of the Sparrow (18 page)

Then she sees James. He wears only leggings and a loincloth. His hair is braided and adorned with three black feathers at his crown. His skin shines in the firelight. A necklace of shells swings back and forth across his chest. He lifts his knees high as he whirls and dances, his feet beating the ground in time to the drum.

She is spellbound. She cannot withdraw her gaze. Her heart begins to beat with the drum. She feels the dancers’ sorrow enter her bones, as her own sorrow dissolves. She feels their wildness in her heart, and her feet begin to move on the earth.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The
Indians mourn for three nights, blackening their faces and dancing and crying out the dead sachem’s name. Quinnapin especially seems broken by this news. Alawa tells Mary that Canonchet was his cousin, and Mary’s heart goes out to him, though she knows she ought to rejoice at the English victory.

The horses captured in the failed raid are picketed near Weetamoo’s wetu. Mary hears them stamping and huffing in the night. A few days after the mourning ceremonies, two warriors come to the wetu and Mary is surprised to find she can understand them as they speak to Weetamoo. They ask if she will allow them to take the horses west into the hills to Albany and trade them for gunpowder, but she dismisses them with a wave of her hand.

Mary steps outside. The horses—a big chestnut gelding and two gray mares—whinny softly when she approaches. She is surprised the Indians have not already killed them for food. She rubs the flank of one of the mares, wishing she had some grass to offer. The mare reminds her of a horse her father bought when she was a young child—a mare so gentle Mary could safely ride alone on her
back. She thinks about the warriors who want to go to Albany. She wonders if they will find a way to go without Weetamoo’s permission.

She forms a plan, and goes in search of James. It is near dark when she finds him standing on a low bluff overlooking the river. The wind sings in the tops of the pines and the moon is rising over the low hills on the far shore, turning the river to silver. She approaches in what she believes is complete silence, for she has learned how to place her moccasin-clad feet so they make almost no sound. Yet before she reaches him, James turns, plainly having heard her.

He smiles and holds out his hand. His look is open, unabashedly happy to see her. She feels an electric ripple at the base of her spine. “I have not seen you for some time. I wondered if you had gone.”

“Gone?” She does not give him her hand. “Where would I go?”

He shrugs. “You might have been sold and taken to some other camp. Or you might have left to find your way back to your home.”

She laughs. “I am not so foolish. I have been making myself useful, as you suggested. I have been sewing shirts.” She moves closer.

“So I have heard. You are becoming Indian.”

He has made this accusation before and usually it irritates her. But this time, she is surprised to feel a flush of satisfaction. She wonders suddenly if she has been trying to become more Indian all along. Her reaction is disturbing. She pushes it away. “I need a favor of you.”

“A favor.”

A slow heat climbs her neck. “Are we not friends?” she says carefully. “And fellow Christians?” She folds her hands in front of her waist, a sign of humility. “You know that Christians are commanded to help each other in times of trial.”

He grunts softly. “What help?”

“I have heard that some of Weetamoo’s warriors are planning an expedition west to the town of Albany.”

“Who told you this?”

She shakes her head, dismissing his question. “I would like to make an arrangement. I want you to take me to Albany and trade me to the English. I will give you half my price.”

“To Albany?” His face is partly in shadow, so she cannot read his expression, but his laugh is unmistakable. “Only an Indian would have the wit to negotiate her own barter so cunningly.”

Her face burns. “I wish only to gain my freedom.”

“What, you have no freedom here?” There is something unusually sharp in his tone. “Think on it. When you were among the English, were you ever allowed to roam the village at will? Did you have time of your own in which to start your own enterprise? Were you not watched constantly? Did you not labor for your husband from waking until sleeping?”

She cannot answer him, for he is uttering the very thoughts she has entertained for weeks now. “I have proposed a bargain to you,” she says, the words like cold stones in her mouth. “You have not yet answered it.”

He looks away, toward the rising moon. “More,” he says after a time. “Half is not enough.”

She is stunned. “I thought you a friend.”

He makes a slight motion with his hand—a flexing of his fist. “Friend or no, you are not likely to fetch a high price. Surely you know that.” He takes a step toward her. “You have lived with Indians,” he says softly. “The English will never trust your claims of virtue.”

She can say nothing. His words are cruel. But she cannot deny their truth.

“Abandon your dreams of returning,” he says. “This is your home now. Your lot is cast with us.”

She draws up her shoulders, stiffening them as if to protect her neck from a blow. “So you will not help me?”

She feels his gaze drawing her in, though neither of them moves. “I
am
helping you,” he says. “I am trying to persuade you to
surrender to your new situation. There is much happiness to be found in acceptance.” He is silent for a moment. “And it is no small thing to slip from Weetamoo’s grasp.”

She feels a shiver along her spine, as if James had just dropped a handful of snow inside her dress. She turns and walks quickly back up the hill toward the camp.

•   •   •

M
ary’s plan of escape comes to nothing, for a few days later they break camp, cross back over the river, and march north. When they stop walking, Mary takes out her sewing.

She has never considered herself more than a clumsy seamstress, but her work pleases the Indians.

An old man gives her a knife in exchange for a shirt. A woman offers her a pouch of ground corn for stockings. She remembers what Joseph so often said: The Lord’s hand is behind every opportunity. She sometimes misses Joseph, with his vast knowledge of the Bible and all of God’s ways. All the years of her marriage she has taken refuge in him, as behooves a good Puritan wife, though it has not been an easy matter to curb her tongue or submit her nature to his authority. Something in her has always longed to strike out in her own direction, to express her own thoughts, not his. Perhaps, as Joseph himself has suggested, her hair signifies a fiery and disobedient temperament. Yet she always tried to discipline herself and act properly, so as not to shame either of them. So as not to bring down God’s wrath on the whole community.

But thinking of Joseph does not bring the rush of longing that would have been seemly for a woman in Mary’s circumstance. She has stopped petitioning the Lord daily for a safe return to her husband’s protection. What prayers she manages to whisper have been for the welfare of her living children. She does not know if Joseph has remained faithful. She does not even know if he is still alive. If he lives, is he now rebuilding their house in Lancaster? Is he plowing the west field? There
is a heavy stone in her stomach, as if an unborn child died there and lies waiting for a sad deliverance from the womb that has become its crypt.

•   •   •

T
he children begin dying. The youngest go first. Even Weetamoo’s own papoose
is wasting away. Mary frets about Joss and Marie. Are they finding enough food to stay alive? Are they suffering from fevers or dysentery? She begs the Lord to give them strength, to keep them well. She reads psalms in secret, searching for solace, but there is none to be had. Death walks through the camp like a sachem, taking one here and one there, at his whim.

Daily, the keening of women fills the camp. The sound is dreadful, like the howling of wolves. It makes Mary feel the same terror in her own throat. Her hearing has sharpened during her time in the wilderness. She has grown more aware of small noises and distant sounds. The waves of grief in the women’s voices remind her of her own wild sorrow at Sarah’s death, which is nearly as fresh now as the day her daughter died, though it is two months past.

They begin moving more often. Sometimes they walk for hours before they stop to set up camp. Then they are on the trail again early the next morning. Sometimes they build wetus and stay for several days. Mary does not know why they move or who decides. There seems to be no pattern to how long they will remain in one place and when they will move on.

The torturous job of rolling up the mats tears the skin of Mary’s fingers and palms. She rolls and rolls, leaving coins of blood on the reeds. Yet the pain is nothing compared to the terrible fainting pains in her stomach. In spite of her sewing enterprise, she is starving. They are all starving.

The days grow longer and the sun is not so distant. The ground begins to thaw. Chickadees bounce through the air in front of her. One day, as they walk beside a river, Mary hears the buzzing trill of blackbirds. Then, from a small tree, she hears a familiar sound and
recognizes it as the call of a sparrow. Despite her hunger pangs, her heart lifts and she is suddenly overwhelmed by the radiance of sunlight and the sweetness of birdsong. A great peace settles over her.

Until now, she has never observed anything but disorder and malevolence in the wilderness. Like her mother and father before her, she has always believed it is a place that harbors evil and danger. For the first time, she finds herself enthralled by its beauty. She senses something mysterious and holy lurking behind the apparent chaos of the forest.

Mary begins having peculiar, unsettling thoughts. She wonders if it is a delirium caused by the constant walking. If Joseph were here, he would likely tell her that God is testing her faithfulness. If so, she has already failed His test. James is right—she has grown accustomed to Indian ways. Though it is a hard life, without the comforts of civilization, there is a beauty in the Indians’ wildness, and freedom in their ways that allows her to forge her own course. She has unexpectedly discovered an enterprising spirit within her nature. In exchanging her needlework for food and shelter, she has established a small place of usefulness and value within their society.

She begins to devise a plan to barter her own children back to her care. She imagines Joss and Marie living with her in a wetu of her own making. She pictures the three of them well fed and rested, going about their simple duties among a cluster of wetus. All of them at a circle fire, joining in the dance. She imagines sitting with Marie, their heads bent toward each other as they weave baskets side by side. She will tell Marie those secret things mothers must tell their daughters: that blood signifies both life and death, that men are sometimes cunning, that a woman’s power lies in her composure.

The days spent on the trail are harrowing. Mary’s basket is sometimes so heavy it rubs her back raw. The carrying strap cuts deeply into her forehead, raising two long welts that score her skin and sometimes bleed in rivulets down her forehead and face. She
fears they will become scars to disfigure her face. But all she can do is apply mud poultices when each day’s trek is done.

One morning, when Weetamoo points to the basket, some perversity makes Mary refuse to lift it. “It is too heavy,” she says, signaling with her hands, pressing down on the top of her head and shoulders to show that she can no longer bear so great a weight.

“
Maninnapish!
Quiet!” Weetamoo’s voice is as hard as the slap that follows. Mary does not see the blow coming and cries out, rocking back as she clutches her face.

“Go!” Weetamoo points with the air of a queen. Mary ducks to avoid another blow and lifts the basket, fastening the strap obediently across her forehead. Her anger gives her new vigor. She moves along the trail with determination, as if she has a destination other than the next camp. It is late morning before she realizes they are traveling east. Back toward Lancaster.

•   •   •

S
lavery makes for an angry heart, the Devil’s breeding ground. Mary recalls the biblical command that the slave must cheerfully obey the master, but she cannot make herself cheerful, cannot force herself to a Christian resignation. She is all resistance, chafing at her duty. Her heart is a cauldron. She wonders if this is what Bess Parker experienced when she was bound out. What Bess’s enslaved son now experiences, wherever he is. She does not understand how anyone could require a slave to be cheerful.

Despite her defiant heart, she does all that Weetamoo asks, tries to satisfy her every whim. She finds that physical labor offers its own solace. When they set up camp, Mary throws herself into the tasks at hand: rebuilding the wetu, tending the fire, fetching water and firewood. When there is nothing Weetamoo requires—and there are many long hours of idleness—she takes up her needles. There has never been a servant more industrious in any English household.