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Authors: Amy Belding Brown

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BOOK: Flight of the Sparrow
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Mary knows Edmund will fight the edict, for he dotes on his grandson. “It is
evil
to take a child from his mother!” she cries. All she can think of is losing her first child to a sweating fever on a cold January morning when the babe was the same age as Silvanus. Mari had been a sweetly gentle child; even her death was gentle. Yet when
she breathed her last, Mary did not want to hold her body, nor even touch it. She refused to look at the trundle bed where Hannah and Elizabeth had laid her out. She felt as a ship in the midst of a tempest, helpless before towering waves of grief. The wound to her heart has never healed.

“Calm yourself,” Joseph says, stroking her cheek. “Do not let sentiment master you. Is not self-control a fruit of the Holy Spirit?”

Mary cannot refute him, but her outrage does not subside. When she learns Joseph has been selected to lead the delegation of six men who will separate Bess from her son, she begs to accompany him.

“Bess will need some Christian comfort from another woman,” Mary insists.

But Joseph refuses, and will not be moved, no matter how much Mary prays and pleads. She waits at home while the monstrous deed is done. She cannot sit still, or concentrate on any task. She flits from one chore to another like a distracted girl. Row, agitated by her distress, flutters in the cage and emits loud, rasping
cheep
s. When Joseph returns, he reports that Edmund barred the door, requiring the men to force their way in. “I tried to calm him,” Joseph says. “I assured him that I brought with me the peace of Christ and reminded him that he must do as the Court has ordered.”

Mary pictures the scene as he describes it—Edmund roaring that he will not allow them to take his grandson. The men breaking down the door, subduing Edmund and Bess. Seizing Silvanus. She imagines the boy, John, bravely trying to beat them off as Silvanus throws his head back and wails with terror. Bess, frantic and weeping as her babe is carried away to his new owner.

Mary can think of nothing to say to her husband, though she wants to ask why he agreed to participate in such a wicked enterprise. She believes he ought to fall to his knees and beg the Lord’s forgiveness. She prepares a basket of food—a beef pottage, a loaf of bread,
turnips, and potatoes—and makes her way in secret to the Parker farm.

There is no calming Bess. She clings to Mary, sobbing and moaning, wetting her cloak all the way through. Mary wishes she could assure her that Silvanus will thrive, that he will be well cared for. Yet she does not know what will become of him. There can be no assurance that his owner will be kind—or even regard the boy as a child of God.

When Mary leaves, it is near twilight. She walks away with a stone in her heart. It seems that she can hear Bess all the way home, continuously moaning in the most broken voice Mary has ever heard:
“Silvanus! Silvanus! Silvanus!”

CHAPTER THREE

That
summer, the land parches to dun under a sun that sears everything—crops, earth, even livestock. Wells dry up, obliging the men to dig new ones, but the water tastes brackish and bitter and dusty, as if God has dipped in a dirty finger. For the second year in a row the wheat harvest fails. Strange lights blaze in the night sky. Witches are found in pious congregations. Barns burst into flame and children drown. Entire families are struck down by the pox.

Even Mary can discern these signs. Clearly, sin and darkness have ensnared New England in a deadly net. When she learns that Deacon Park has sold both Bess’s lover and her son, and that Bess herself has been bound out again—this time to a judge’s family in Salem—she is certain the day of God’s wrath is at hand.

Thus she is not surprised when, in late June of 1675, word comes from Boston that Indians have attacked the village of Swansea, in Plymouth Colony. Pagan tribes have joined to form an army and are marching north into Massachusetts Bay. In mid-August Indians lay siege to Quabaug, a frontier town west of Lancaster. A
fortnight later, on a hot Sabbath morning, they attack farms in the north sector of Lancaster itself, butchering George Benet and all his animals outside his barn and leaving Lidia widowed with five babes and no relation to come to her aid. Joseph Farrar meets the same fate. His poor wife is in a stupor for weeks, abandoning her children to fend for themselves. The MacLoud family is slain in their dooryard as their house burns before their eyes. The Indians do not even spare four-year-old Hannah. Two days later, a violent storm rips trees from the ground and ruins the fields of wheat and maize.

Weekly, Joseph’s brow glistens with the exertions of his preaching. He cries out and smacks the air with his fists. God, he reminds the congregation, does not hesitate to rebuke those He loves. Has He not visited earthquake, fire, and plague upon the Bay Colony? Is not Lancaster’s disobedience as great as any of the Bay towns?

By November, the Indian situation has grown so desperate that the selectmen consider enclosing the entire town. Someone calculates that it will require a fence eight feet tall and twelve miles long and they abandon the plan. Instead, the largest homes are designated garrison houses. Two men are appointed to build a stockade around the Rowlandson house, providing a measure of safety but spoiling Mary’s view from the dooryard. Where she was once able to see trees blanketing the hills beyond neat fields of wheat and flax, now she faces only stout posts set close together like the brown teeth of a great beast.

Winter comes, and an icy wind sweeps the hills and cracks the branches of trees. Rain falls and freezes on the doorstep. One night the full moon darkens and turns red as if drenched in blood. Cakes refuse to rise and bake into dense dry bricks. The sparrow no longer sings in its cage. Jonas Fairbanks reports that he heard the blaring of unholy trumpets early one Saturday morning when he walked on George Hill. Thomas Hosmer tells of the birth of a calf in nearby Groton whose head was so monstrously deformed the animal could
not stand. Witches’ stones crash against the Sawyer house three nights in a row and it is said that the dung of a passing crow struck a man dead on the Concord Turnpike.

In January, everyone in Lancaster is ordered to take shelter nightly in their designated garrisons. Mary’s sisters and their families are assigned to the Rowlandson garrison, as are their closest neighbors, the Joslins and the Kettles. By day everyone goes about their duties warily, the way a farmer harvests his ripened grain with one eye cast toward a fretful sky. At night, more than forty people crowd into the house, bringing their blankets and food stores and little else, for there is no room to accommodate furniture. Mary’s household, which she strives to order daily, becomes a place of noise and disarray.

In early February, Joseph tells Mary that he has decided to travel to Boston and beg the governor to send troops for their protection. Mary tries to dissuade him. The night before his departure, as they lie in bed, she pleads with him. “Can you not wait till spring?” She tries to keep her voice low, mindful that the bed curtains do little to muffle sound. She can hear the snores and sighs of her relatives and neighbors who sleep on pallets only a few feet away. “’Tis the dead of winter and travel to Boston is arduous.”

“Mary, hush.” He rolls to face her. Even in the dark she can see that his forehead has knit into a frown. He strokes her cheek, trying to gentle her as she does the children when they are fretful. “You will infect others with your fears. You must be strong in the Lord.”

“Send Lieutenant Kerley in your stead! Surely he is more suited to the task.” She whispers the words, hoping that her sister Elizabeth is not awake to hear Mary offer her husband in place of her own.

“Henry
will
go. Did I not tell you? He has already agreed to accompany me. But in Boston they will be more persuaded by a minister than a yeoman soldier.”

Mary struggles to still her tongue, to submit her will to his. Yet fear assaults her again, sliding up her back like a cold snake. “And what are we to do if the Indians attack while you are gone?”

He clicks his tongue irritably. “Do you think I would leave if I thought that likely? The very reason I go is to insure that we will
not
be attacked.”

“But if we are—”

He cuts her off, and tells her what she already knows. “I do not leave you without protection. The house is well garrisoned. John Divoll and John Kettle are here. Abraham Joslin, John MacLoud. My own nephew—”

“Thomas is but a boy,” Mary protests.

“Hush you, now! He is nineteen and more skilled with a musket than I am.”

Again Mary strives for silence. Again she fails. “Can you not wait until the house is fully secured?” She thinks of the flankers the men have begun building at the corners of the house, spaces a man with a musket can squeeze into and sight the enemy through long vertical slits.

She hears him sigh and realizes their conversation is over. “The Lord will be your safekeeping, Mary,” Joseph whispers. She feels his warm breath against her ear. “Sleep now. You must trust always in Him.”

She nods
yes
, her forehead lightly brushing his chest. She breathes in his warmth, his familiar scent. Joseph is her husband, the head of her house, as Christ is head of the church, and she owes him loving obedience. She must trust him. Though she sleeps little, she says no more that night.

•   •   •

T
he sun is rising as Mary follows her husband into the yard the next morning. Joss has brought the bay mare from the barn and is stroking her neck. Elizabeth’s husband, Henry, is already
mounted on his black gelding. A sudden gust of wind sweeps down from the ridge behind the house, and Mary shivers, for it is plainly an ill omen. She sees Joseph glance at her, and forces a smile of encouragement. She does not want him to discern that her bodily humors have turned to vinegar.

Elizabeth comes out of the house and goes at once to Henry, who is shivering in his thin uniform. Mary sees that Joseph, too, is shivering—though with cold or excitement, she cannot tell. She takes his hand, but fleetingly, for the journey to Boston is long and grueling, and he and Henry must ride in daylight because of the Indian menace. He mounts the mare.

“Godspeed you,” Mary manages to say, shielding her eyes against the brightening sky so that she can make out his features.

“We will return before the week is out,” he promises, leaning down. “The Lord will keep you. Trust in His mercy.”

She nods, accepting his instruction, knowing he means to comfort her. Yet, as the men guide their horses up the bank and into the lane, Mary has the evil thought that she will never again see her husband alive. She feels a wave of self-pity that she fears will dribble out of her all day in small, bitter drops.

CHAPTER FOUR

For
four days Lancaster waits for Joseph and Henry to return with soldiers, but no word comes from Boston. The women and children keep to the house. Mary goes about her duties with the other women, tending the fire, scrubbing floors, washing clothes, watching over the children, preparing food. They make porridges of dried peas and beans, stews of boiled parsnips and ham, loaves of bannock bread and pans and pans of biscuits. There are so many in the garrison that they have to set two boards at midday. Everyone eats quickly from common trenchers; even the children are subdued.

Mary minds her own children vigilantly, keeping a singular eye on six-year-old Sarah. Marie is now ten, sturdy and obedient, stalwart as her father. Joss is two years older, rangy and impulsive, desperately needing to be put to work. There is never enough for him to do in this confined space. Mary often sets him to cutting firewood at the back door, yet his liveliness is never sated.

Each night, after their day’s labors are done and the children asleep, the women sit together while the fire burns down. They
mend and knit and talk of their fears. On the third night, Priscilla Roper says something that turns Mary’s blood to ice.

“Do you not suspicion,” Priscilla says, “that Bess Parker’s sin has brought this menace upon our town?”

BOOK: Flight of the Sparrow
8.76Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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