Flight of the Sparrow (8 page)

Mary hears a woman scream behind her. She turns to see Priscilla Roper stagger and fall as an Indian strikes her on the side of her head with his club. Priscilla keeps her arms around her young daughter as she falls. But the girl is trapped beneath her and starts to scream. The Indian yanks her out from under Priscilla’s body. For a moment Mary thinks he will hand her to another woman, and she even extends her own free arm to accept the girl. Instead, he tosses her high into the air, swings his club and smashes her skull. The girl drops at his feet, dead.

Her captor tugs on her rope and Mary lurches forward. She is shaking so hard she is afraid her legs cannot hold her. Sarah moans and she hushes her urgently. The whole line is moving. Mary loses sight of Joss and Marie as they are swallowed in a great shifting chain of people. The Indians are hurrying the captives away, leading them south along the lane like cattle at a market. Abruptly, they turn west into the field, pulling and jerking the captives toward the forest. It is strangely silent; the only sound Mary hears besides feet shuffling through the snow is the warning shriek of a jay.

Mary sways under Sarah’s weight; her daughter slows her as surely as shackles. She feels blood from her own wound flowing down her left side. Waves of vertigo sweep through her. Where the snow has drifted and lies deep in a small hollow, she stumbles and nearly falls. The air is foul with smoke. They march in a long ragged column across the field, in snow up to their calves.

Only once does Mary look back. Their blood has made a jagged pink trail in the snow. The walls and roof of her home have fallen. A smoking pyre rises over the place where her sister’s body lies.

Then they go into the trees, and Mary feels as if she has come to the end of the world.

CHAPTER SIX

The
snow is not as deep under the trees. It has been packed down by the feet of the Indians and captives in front of Mary, so she no longer has to wallow through drifts. Yet they move slowly, on a trail that only the Indians know. The tree trunks, black against the snow, remind her of a stockade wall.

They begin to climb a steep path disordered with roots and rocks. She hears children moan and cry out for their mothers, but they do not stop walking. They are strung out in a long line—Indians and captives tied together—a line that twists like a snake into the forest. Mary sees a group of warriors herding pigs and an ox. Some carry dead chickens and tools—kettles and rakes and shovels. A young warrior holds a leather flail in his left hand, idly flipping it back and forth as he walks. It is clear the Indians have plundered many houses.

She hears Indians talking in their garbled language. Several times she trips, but manages to recover before she falls. In her fear and fatigue, she begins to imagine that the warriors will drive them on and on until they all fall dead, never reaching any destination. The wound in her side burns and her chest and arms ache from
carrying Sarah. The rope chafes her neck. She knows they must be climbing George Hill, though it feels as if she’s walked much farther than a mile. The light is muted under the trees, which makes it difficult to see the path, especially with Sarah in her arms. When Mary stumbles, the rope nearly chokes her.

Finally the land begins to level off and she sees the roof of a building poking over the brow of the hill. It is the old trucking house, or what is left of it, for it has been long abandoned. But it is shelter, and at this moment of exhaustion the sight of an English house gives Mary hope, especially when she sees the Indians preparing to stop for the night. Apparently even devils have to sleep.

Mary is still tied to her captor. He has stopped to talk to a warrior wrapped in a red blanket. She wishes she knew their language. She thinks of Timothy, the young Nashaway servant who ran away. She regrets reprimanding him for using Indian speech. If she had learned those words, they might prove useful now.

She looks around for Joss and Marie, but cannot find them in the semi-gloom. She gently lowers Sarah to the ground and cups some snow into her palm. She holds it until it melts, then dribbles the few drops of water into her daughter’s mouth. Sarah moans constantly and seems half asleep, though from time to time she rouses to ask where she is. Blood still oozes from the wound in her stomach; the stain now covers not only her waist but her bodice and skirt front. And it’s smeared all over Mary’s apron.

Mary lifts Sarah again and shifts her higher in a vain attempt to relieve the ache in her shoulders. Her own wound pulses and burns as she steps toward her captor. “Please,” she says. “Let us use the house.” She points to the sagging roof, hoping that he understands some English. “To sleep. For the women and children.”

He frowns, spits on the ground, and then wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “What, you love English still?” He forms the words slowly behind his teeth. They come out as throaty sounds that remind Mary of a dog’s bark. But the meaning is clear enough.

“Aye, I love them,” Mary says. “Am I not English? What has that to do with taking shelter?”

His eyebrows rise and he erupts in a burst of grunts that she slowly perceives is his peculiar mode of laughter. The man he has been talking with joins in. Her captor says something in his own tongue and laughs again. The other Indian begins hopping around, clucking and screeching like a crazed hen.

A third Indian approaches. He is tall, with even features and a steady gaze. He wears leggings of deer hide and a dark blue blanket over his right shoulder. But his face has not been painted, and when he gestures, Mary glimpses an English waistcoat beneath the blanket. He speaks to the warriors in their tongue and then looks at her.

“Do you understand your situation?” He speaks English clearly, without a strong accent.

“My situation?” The pain in her side is coming in sharp waves, wringing sweat from her despite the cold. “Tell them that I am the wife of Lancaster’s minister. My daughter is sorely wounded.”

“They know who you are,” he says. “It was ordered that you be taken.”

She frowns. “Someone planned my capture? How would they know me?”

He looks at her hair. “You are easily marked. They looked for a woman whose hair is the color of the fox.” He smiles.

Her captor looks at her and speaks, a torrent of incomprehensible words. She looks questioningly at the tall Indian. “Kehteiyomp says you are of no importance now,” he tells her. “You must remember that you are a slave.”

Slave.
The word lashes her. She thinks at once of Bess and her lover, who is a slave, of the child who was torn from her. She recalls Bess saying that slavery was a great evil in God’s eyes. She recalls her own assumption that it is God’s will. Now the Lord’s judgment has come upon her with an exquisitely crafted punishment. She herself is enslaved and will soon become intimate with its rigors.

“He wants to know where your husband is,” the tall man says. “He wants to know why he did not defend you.”

Mary studies her captor’s face, wondering if she should tell the truth. “He has gone to Boston,” she says. “He will rescue me when he returns.”

Her captor laughs and makes a cutting motion across his neck. “He not save you,” he says. “Men slay him when he come.” He gives the rope a sudden, sharp tug, and Mary lurches forward. Sarah cries out. Her captor turns and moves quickly along the ridge, forcing Mary to clutch Sarah more tightly and hurry after him.

In front of the empty house, several men have dug a pit and are building a huge fire. Mary is shaking with cold and hunger. But instead of leading her to shelter the warrior pulls her to a large stone two rods away from the fire, and sweeps it clean of snow.

“Here,” he says, pointing. “You sleep here.”

Mary cannot imagine sleeping ever again, let alone on a frozen rock with no blanket. She shakes her head. “Please,” she says. “Let me sleep in the shelter with my children.”

He strikes her so hard she loses her footing and tumbles back onto the rock. Sarah falls, thrashing, on top of her. Mary sprawls there, wondering at her own foolishness. She had reacted impulsively, without thinking of the consequences—as if she and Sarah were not in the gravest danger.

Her captor gestures that she must sleep where she fell. Mary pulls Sarah to her and spreads the cloak over both of them, though it is a poor barrier against the bitterly cold night. Her head swims and her side feels as if a hot iron is pressing against it, pressing deeper with every breath. She closes her eyes and prays—for her husband’s safety and for God’s mercy upon her and her poor captive children.

•   •   •

M
ary starts awake. Unearthly, piercing cries swirl through the darkness, lifting the small hairs on her neck. She raises her head. The Indians have gathered in a wide circle around the fire.
Some are making the rhythmic yelps and shrieks that awakened her, while others writhe before them in grotesque postures. Like creatures from hell, she thinks. They hop and twist around the fire, their bodies black against the bright flames. It takes her a moment to understand what she is seeing. But she finally realizes—their cries are an unholy music, and their convoluted movements are a barbaric form of dancing. She is witnessing a celebration, a pagan thanksgiving.

The men have butchered livestock. The leg of a cow—perhaps her own milk cow—roasts on a spit over the fire. A sow’s head lies near a pile of unplucked hens. Mary does not move, yet as she watches, she grows angry. It is
English
food they are eating, the fruit of
her
labor feeding the enemy, while she has not even a morsel to nourish herself or her child.

She sits all the way up and pulls Sarah into her lap. The girl’s eyes blink open and shut and she whimpers, “Mother
.”
Her skirt and bodice are torn at the waist, the fabric soaked in blood. Mary tries to examine her wound without hurting her, but every time she starts to open the bodice, Sarah moans and flails her arms. After several attempts, Mary admits defeat. Even if she could clearly see the wound, she has no salve to treat it. She resettles Sarah against her bosom and rocks her back to sleep.

The chanting and dancing go on and on. Mary feels herself slide into a sort of trance, brooding on what she witnessed that day and wondering what lies ahead. She reminds herself that it is God’s providence that Sarah still lives, and that she herself has been preserved to care for her daughter. Perhaps He wants Mary to prevail against the heathens. Didn’t He show the people of Israel again and again that their strength was in Him? Didn’t He lead them out of Egypt?

In the flickering light, Mary notes that the rope that binds her neck has been thrown over a branch above her head, with the other end tied to a tree some distance away. As she studies the
arrangement, she sees its cleverness—it permits her some limited movement, but if she tries to go too far, she will quickly strangle herself.

She peers into the trees that rise beyond the firelight. The Indians are occupied with their celebration and pay no attention to her. If she moves slowly and quietly, she might be able to untie the knot, carry Sarah into the concealing trees, and find her way home.

Home.
She has no home. Her house is gone, no more than charred beams on the frozen earth. Yet she reasons that there must be some building or shed in Lancaster left standing, a place where she and Sarah could shelter until the troops that her husband promised come to their rescue. She wishes she knew where Joss and Marie are. She has not seen them since they were marched across the field out of Lancaster.

She lies down again and works her fingers into the thick knot at the back of her neck. Slowly, she begins to loosen it. When an Indian looks in her direction, she closes her eyes and opens her fingers, feigning sleep. She works at the knot for a long time, but cannot free herself. Her captor has tied it with such cunning that her only escape is death.

•   •   •

T
he dancing and chanting last through the night. Mary lies on the rock next to Sarah, covering them both with her cloak, trying not to move. She remembers the biblical account of Joseph and his captivity in Egypt. How God protected him and raised him up. After some time she sinks into a fitful sleep.

When she wakes, the sky has lightened, shining like a gray pearl. Her legs and shoulders ache and the wound in her side throbs. She lifts the cloak and looks at Sarah. Her eyes are closed and she makes no sound, but her cheeks are flushed, and when Mary kisses her forehead, she feels the dry heat of her fever. She sits up but Sarah does not wake. She is as limp as a doll on the cold granite. Mary says
her name, praying for strength. But there is no one to give her any comfort, except the Lord. And He seems very far away.

She thinks of the English-speaking Indian, wonders where he has gone. Perhaps she could prevail on him to help. He is so well-spoken he must have lived among Englishmen for some time. Perhaps he is a Praying Indian, one of John Eliot’s converts. Mary knows that the minister in Roxbury has converted many heathen natives, organizing them into small villages in the wilderness where only Christian Indians live.