Flight of the Sparrow (21 page)

“He may be dead yet,” James says, “for I have no more food. Nor muskets or arrows to hunt with.”

The youth assures her he is grateful, but there is something
sullen in the curl of his mouth that she does not like. She leaves the wetu, determined to scrounge food for James and the youth. Yet she is able to find only two groundnuts and a scrap of bread so dry it crumbles to dust at her touch. As she peels a strip of soft bark from a chestnut tree with the intention of making a stew of the bark and nuts, Alawa finds her and tells her that Weetamoo wants her to return to the wetu at once and mend a shirt.

The next morning, as Mary walks through the camp, she overhears a rumor that the English youth has escaped. She hurries along the path and finds James smoking a pipe outside his wetu. He confirms that the youth is gone, that he left in the middle of the night. “He has returned your kindness—and mine—with cowardly betrayal,” he tells Mary. “No one seems to care for kindness anymore. Perhaps we are well rid of him. He is one less mouth to feed, one less body to take up space in a wetu.”

“No!” She is unable to agree with this dark vision of the world. “Kindness redeems our hearts, no matter whether we are thanked for it.”

He draws on his pipe, thoughtfully studying her face. Smoke drifts in gray curls from the bowl.

Finally, he takes the pipe from his mouth and rests it in his palm. “So I believed in my youth. But sorrow has come with the English and infested our lands. We must learn new truths or die.” He gazes past Mary at the budding trees, as if he can see through their branches into the future.

•   •   •

I
n the days that follow, Mary thinks about James almost constantly, recalling every encounter, from the moment he cut the rope from her neck, to the night they lay side by side in his wetu. She ponders the unsettling attraction between them, the way he listens so closely to her, the respect he shows her even though she is a woman and a slave.

Every day, the air is sweeter with the earth’s perfume. There are buds on the trees, and small yellow and white flowers bloom here and there in the sunlight. Sparrows and warblers sing hidden in the forest. A mountain rises not far away, the trees on it tinged with red, as if dark blood flows through the naked branches. Mary stands watching, drawing in great draughts of air. She is struck by the realization that the wilderness has become a place of beauty to her. A place that is no longer filled only with danger, but also with mystery and peace.

•   •   •

T
he next day they pack up and begin to march again, through thickets and barren places, past swamps and over rocks. They are forced to stop often, for the streams are in spring flood and difficult to ford. They make camp and remain for a few days on the bank of a wide river
.
It runs fast and hard, throwing up white feathers of foam as it tumbles over rocks. When Mary is sent to fetch water, she stands on the bank entranced, watching the river dance in the sunlight until she hears Weetamoo call.

On the second afternoon of the new encampment, warriors return from a hunt with two deer and a moose. The people feast all night. Yet only a few young men dance around the fire. Mary does not see James there, nor has she seen him since the morning after the youth’s escape. She misses him.

They wade across the river the next morning, through water so cold it numbs Mary’s feet and legs. The force of the current makes her reel, and it takes a fierce effort to push through the water. With each step she is afraid she will fall. She hears the sound of laughter and looks up to see Alawa and two other women standing on the bank laughing at her. She feels a quick rush of anger, but it fades as she realizes how foolish she must look swaying through the water like a drunken woman. She smiles back at them, but as she reaches the far side, her foot slips on a stone and she crashes to her knees.
Her legs scramble and splash in the water, whipping up a froth of skirt and river; her hands claw the mud at the water’s edge. Yet, as she manages to grasp a nearby sapling and pull herself up the sloping bank to a flat place at the top, she too is laughing. Alawa helps her to her feet and they start walking again.

After they cross the river, a contagious energy passes among the people and a strange lightness of heart comes over Mary. She listens to the women’s chatter as they walk and learns that they will soon come to a great gathering place they call
Wachusett
. Philip and some of his warriors have gone ahead and are waiting for them.

They make camp again and Mary pours herself into doing the tasks Weetamoo commands: fetching water, gathering firewood, unrolling the sleeping mats and placing them in the lean-to shelter Alawa has erected. But she is soon left idle, and slips away.

She walks aimlessly. The stench of sickness is everywhere. People sprawl on the bare ground, groaning in hunger. Children cry piteously, clutching their stomachs. The few dogs that have not been eaten slink at the edges of the camp, seeking food and finding none. Mary keeps walking, trying to outpace her hunger.

She climbs a low ridge that opens onto a stone outcropping overlooking the camp. Low clouds the color of dung hang in the west. The trees are budding. She thinks of her kitchen garden in its spring growth. The onions and artichokes will come up on their own, but this year there will be no leeks or melons, no carrots or cabbages, for she is doubtful that Joseph—if he lives—has taken care to plant them. The lavender, if it blooms, will perfume no rooms or bedclothes. She idly fingers the stray flakes of dried lavender that have lain in her pocket all winter. Their fragrance is no longer strong enough to leave a scent on her fingers.

She remembers last spring, when Marie helped her care for the kitchen garden. How diligent the girl had been, how attentive to her weeding, determined to root out every threat to the tender shoots.
Mary had never contemplated before how diligently Marie attended to the details of her chores, how gentle she was in her character. Tears sting the corners of her eyes, and she quickly brushes them away.

She is struck by her strange situation. Though she is a captive, she experiences a remarkable liberty of movement. She recalls the many times in Lancaster she wanted to walk out the door and across the fields alone. How she had longed for the freedom to go where she wished—when she wished—free from neighbors’ reproving looks and her sisters’ chastening tongues. Yet she had rarely strayed beyond the yard by herself except the few times she visited Bess Parker. She had acted the part of the captive, though she was neither shackled nor restrained.

She thinks daily about Joss and Marie, prays they are well, and wonders if they have been rescued or ransomed back to civilization. She knows that Indians like to capture and adopt children from other tribes to replace their own dead children. Sometimes the children never return to their homes. Even when offered liberty, they choose to stay with their new families. She has also heard rumors that Indians sometimes sell children to papists in the French colony of Canada.

“Better that they die than forfeit their souls to Rome.” She whispers the sentiment she heard Joseph express so many times. Yet something lurches at the base of her spine even as the words slip past her lips. The truth is that she desires only that her children
live.
Even if their fate is to be papists or Indians, she wants them
alive
.

Is she therefore willing to give their souls over to the Devil? Is she the most wicked of mothers? She forgets the terrible pangs in her belly and tries to summon some Christian remorse, using the most punishing reproaches she can think of. But she cannot wring a proper guilt from her heart. If she wants to repent of anything, it is of the harsh methods she used in raising her children. She recalls the times she struck Marie for impertinence, remembers the sturdy
birch switch used to thrash Joss when sloth got the better of the boy. She punished her children with the dutiful regularity of all Puritan mothers, yet she now regrets every harsh word. What she once believed necessary now seems to her needlessly cruel. She often sees Indian mothers laugh with their children and indulge their childish antics. She knows she ought to righteously condemn them, but the truth is she longs only to imitate them. What harm could come if the English treat their children with kindness and mercy?

The scent of a cook fire reaches her on tendrils of smoke. In the camp below, women are fetching water from the river. She knows that Weetamoo will be vexed if she is not at hand. She makes her way down the hill into the camp.

It begins to rain; fat drops fall on her head and neck and shoulders. She runs for Weetamoo’s shelter and slides inside. It is dry and hot from smoke and close-packed bodies. She creeps to the far wall, takes out her sewing and waits for Weetamoo to give her orders. But Weetamoo is absorbed in a conversation with Alawa. After a while Mary dozes off.

She wakes to a great crash of thunder. Everyone in the shelter is silent; they wait, heads turned toward the sound. But nothing follows. There is no new clap of thunder, no quaking of the earth. Mary finds her mat in the semi-dark and lies down. She falls asleep to the sound of the rain beating all around her like a hundred drums.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

In
the morning, they break camp and walk toward a mountain that rises beyond the trees. Alawa tells Mary that it has always been a sign of hope and home for the Nipmuc people, a place to gather beneath the shelter of sacred spirits.

A feeling of dread comes over Mary, as if she is walking to her doom. Worse, she perceives she is not alone in this, but everyone around her is doomed as well; they are gathering not in hope but in desperation.

Everyone is starving. It is plain in the ravaged faces around her, in the exhausted strides of the gaunt warriors, and in the sorrow in the eyes of the old ones. They now eat anything they can fit into their mouths: insects, grubs, worms, tree bark, hides, even bones. One evening Mary is given a shard of boiled horse’s hoof and sits on the ground, sucking and chewing until there is nothing left. A saying is passed around: Hunger masters the strongest warrior once it makes its home among the people.

She begins to hear rumors that Boston has offered payment for the captives. It is said that Philip will surely accept, for he needs
more muskets, more bullets and, most of all, more food for his people. Mary feels a weight at the base of her spine, a dullness in her heart. It is as if she has already perished and has no need for rescue.

Late in the afternoon, they come to a half-built stockade. Beyond it, the land rises toward the mountain. Alawa tells Mary that they have finally reached Wachusett. Several wetus have already been erected; their domes make shadows across the greening meadow. Mary is faint from the long march and lack of food, but so is everyone else. She makes no protest when Weetamoo orders her to help build a new wetu.

•   •   •

M
ary does not see James until two days later, when he approaches her as she gathers sticks for the fire.

“I have news,” he says.

She feels a sweet flutter in her chest as she looks up at him. “Is it my children? Are they here in camp?”

He frowns. “I know nothing of them. I am sorry.”

“Nothing?” The sticks seem suddenly too heavy to carry. Mary bends and places them carefully on the ground. Every movement she makes now is arduous. “Pray, then, tell me what news.”

“The sachems are debating your situation. It is said they will soon redeem you to your people.”

“Redeem?” Her eyes cannot seem to focus.

He nods. “It is all but certain. They wait on Philip.”

She tries to absorb this information, but all she is aware of is a dreadful sensation of loss. Finally she manages to speak, her tongue sluggish and thick in her mouth. “Are Joss and Marie to be redeemed with me, then?”

“I have told you already—I know nothing of their fates.” He tilts his head. “Come,
Chikohtqua
. Is this not the news you have longed for?”

Her cheeks flare. She has no answer for his question that does
not bring her shame. Only a few weeks ago, she was begging him to help her escape to Albany. She licks her lips. “I cannot—” She stops. She does not even know what it is she cannot do.
Cannot go back to the English without her children? Cannot leave the wilderness? Cannot return to her husband?

James looks at her as if she is a strange being, a creature not of this world. Then his expression softens. “You do not want to leave,” he says quietly. “You have grown too fond of Indian ways.”

She says nothing, though she knows he is expecting her to refute him. It is surely her hunger and fatigue that create this confusion in her heart. From the moment of her capture she has hated the Indians and their savagery. Has she not? Her strange thoughts are like cords binding her chest, cords pulled so tight she cannot breathe.

•   •   •

T
hat night, Alawa cautions Mary to wash herself with extra care, for she will be brought before the sachems the next day. “Metacomet has called a council,” she says. “The sachems will decide your fate.”