Crow Hollow (16 page)

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY

James led the others cautiously into Winton. Women were out sweeping snow from in front of their houses, while men chopped wood or tended to stock. The sound of a hammer rang through the air. He saw nothing to raise his suspicions, but he stayed wary all the same.

“Do you see that trail?” Prudence said when they’d passed the first few houses.

She pointed to what looked like a sheep path, nothing but a slight indentation in the snow. It traversed a field, bisected a stone wall, and disappeared into the woods beyond.

“That leads you to Sachusett,” she said. “The old Nipmuk village. It’s no more than a mile away. The two villages lived side by side, peacefully—a full twenty years with no trouble.”

“A shame,” James said.

“They always said in Springfield that if trouble came, the Winton militia wouldn’t fight,” Cooper said. “They were too cozy with the Indians.”

“Why would we?” she said. “Captain Knapp came through, trying to rile us up. We’d go fight against the Narragansett, yes. Or even against the Nipmuk besieging Springfield. But we had no quarrel with our neighbors. The sachem of Sachusett had pledged peace and eternal brotherhood.”

“Eternal up until the bloody attack, that is,” Cooper said. He sounded more bitter than angry.

Prudence looked away with a sorrowful expression.

“I assume the Indian village is destroyed now,” James said.

“I’m not sure,” she said. “Must have been. But the Indians carried me away before it happened.”

“Aye, it’s gone,” Cooper said. His voice was hollow. “I was there. After the Battle of Winton, we sent a revenge party to Sachusett. It was ugly business.”

“War is never pretty,” James said.

“You know that Indian village we passed through earlier?” Cooper asked. “That’s what Sachusett looked like when we were finished.”

James turned in the saddle to study the Indian road as they passed. Such a modest trail, it was hard to believe that it had led to so much violence in both directions.

“Anyway,” Cooper continued after a moment, “if you continue that way, ford the creek and follow the Connecticut River, you’ll be in Indian territory by nightfall.”

“So the Nipmuk
aren’t
exterminated,” James said. “They have more villages?”

“Oh, they’re gone, so far as we know,” Cooper said. “But there won’t be any English settlement north of the creek any time soon. Because there’s always another tribe, isn’t there? No matter how far you go, you’ll always find another enemy. And to the north you also find the French trappers and missionaries.”

“No doubt whispering lies about us,” James said.

Cooper nodded. “Always.”

“There’s something else on the end of that trail,” Prudence said. “Crow Hollow.”

James was of half a mind to take a detour through the site of Knapp’s massacre of the unarmed Indians, but they were coming into Winton proper. Now that they were closer he could see signs of past violence. Empty, rubble-filled lots left gaping holes between the standing houses, many of which had been rebuilt. Of the two meetinghouses sitting across from each other on the commons, the first, larger building was missing its roof and the rear wall. Snow covered the floor inside and clung to the charred beams. The pews had burned.

“Looks safe enough,” Cooper said, glancing around. “A few nosy Puritans staring at us, that’s all. Maybe I was wrong about Burrows. Most likely he took the money and bought strong drink when he was in Springfield, came home roaring drunk, and never noticed Widow Cotton’s letter.”

“Sooner or later Burrows will sober up,” James said. “And then we’ll have trouble.”

Prudence winced.

He should let her twitch for a bit—this was a snare of her own making—but mostly he felt sorry for her. And maybe he should have trusted her more, told her his plans for throwing Knapp’s men off their trail. She might have been more circumspect in her actions.

James turned to Prudence. “Your old servant—Goody Hull, was it?”

“Aye.”

“And is she trustworthy?”

“She is. You wish to speak with her?”

“She survived the attack, remained in Winton after you were carried away. Mayhap she possesses information that yet eludes us. Where does she live?”

Prudence gestured with her chin. “Go past the new meetinghouse. See that lane? Follow it to the end. It’s the last house before the forest.”

They rode down the commons, which wasn’t flat but swelled to a small hillock in the middle, maybe a dozen feet high. Several paths had been carved in the snow to its top, and two girls went sliding down on a sled made of planks atop two wooden runners. On the opposite side, three boys were building a snow castle.

“I never thought I would see children playing here again,” Prudence said. “Not after what happened on this very spot.”

“People carry on,” James said. “Memory fades.”

A young girl hurried past dragging a sled, and Prudence watched her go with big, sorrowful eyes. “I only hope that someday my Mary . . .” Her voice trailed off.

“I’m sure that she will,” he said. “Have faith.”

“Thank you, James. That is kind of you to say.”

The last, fading remnants of his anger vanished. There was no use carrying it any further. She’d made a terrible blunder, make no mistake, but it had apparently cost them nothing.

One of the boys looked up and pointed. “Look, it’s Widow Cotton!”

“Hurry,” Cooper urged, “or there’s bound to be a disturbance.”

They urged the horses to pick up the pace. When they reached the end of the commons, Prudence drew short. She stared forward. It took James a moment to figure out what had alarmed her.

They were in front of the new meetinghouse. It was smaller, the wood still pale and unaged, the icicles on the roof draping from fresh cedar shingles. The doors were painted a somber brown. But surrounding the building was grisly evidence that Winton was fighting back against the wilderness.

At least twenty wolf heads leered from where they’d been nailed to the building, with fresh blood in several cases running from the severed heads to congeal against the boards. Even more gruesome was the pair of human heads resting on poles. These had been there some time. The lips and noses had rotted away, the eyeballs had been plucked out by crows, and the straight black hair had half fallen out.

The poles stood right next to the road. The hollow eye sockets seemed to gape at them as they approached.

Prudence looked away, her face turning pale. “I don’t want to go past.”

“They’re dead,” Cooper said. “The vermin can’t hurt you now.”

“They’re not vermin, they’re human beings.”

“They proved themselves nothing but savages. And if the heathens return, they’ll take one look and know what happens to savages in these parts.”

Cooper’s voice was so hard that James almost forgot that his former companion had himself adopted an orphan girl from these same savages. It was a strange contradiction.

Prudence looked up. “I knew these men. That is Mikmonto, the sachem. That’s his half brother, Nimposet. During the battle he killed an English woman by crushing her head with the blacksmith’s hammer. He kept hitting and hitting.”

“He has his reward, the brute,” Cooper said. “I hope they made him suffer.”

“Hold your tongue,” James told him. “Look away, Prudie.”

A shudder worked through her, and she gripped the reins so tightly her knuckles were white. But she nodded and obeyed.

Perhaps smelling the wolf heads, the horses grew jittery as they rode around the meetinghouse to the lane Prudence had identified earlier. They didn’t calm until the wind had shifted and they no longer faced the grisly scene. The three companions rode down the lane to the very end, where they came upon a small brick house with a clumsily patched roof and a yard overgrown with the bare, thorny branches of brambles jutting from the snow.

James glanced back up the lane. Two women stood at its head, staring after them. One whispered in the other’s ear.

“Take the horses around back to the barn,” he told Cooper as the three of them dismounted. “Find them water and something to eat, if you can. But keep them ready to go. And check your powder, make sure it’s dry.”

Cooper did as he was told. James took Prudence’s elbow and led her up to the door. She still seemed to be suffering under the spell of whatever memories had come clawing up when she’d spotted the Indian heads.

“Are you ready?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Honestly, I’m not sure I can face the widow. I saw her husband die and did nothing to stop it.”

“She was there, she knows you were helpless to stop it.”

“I never saw her that day. The Hulls lived on the other side of the village. I don’t know how she escaped—I only saw what happened to Goodman Hull.”

He nodded, attempting sympathy, but there was no time to patiently work her through this.

“We’re rather pressed,” he said. “I can only assume that Burrows saw your note, hurried back to Springfield, and found Knapp looking for us. The brute might be riding hard up the road as we speak. The moment Knapp reaches Winton, someone is going to point helpfully down this lane.”

She took a deep breath and nodded. “I understand.”

“I’m a stranger here. Goody Hull knows you and trusts you. You must keep your wits about you. Ask her the right questions, find out exactly what happened that day. Can you do that?”

“If I must.”

He knocked.

An old woman with an eye patch opened the door. She held the end of her shawl over her face, like the old women James sometimes saw in London who ventured from their houses rarely, and with great fear of breathing diseased air. He couldn’t see why that was necessary here.

Prudence hesitated only a moment before seeming to recover her wits. “Goody Hull, what cheer. It’s me, Widow Cotton. May I come in?”

“It’s Widow Hull now, my husband—Prudie?” the woman said from behind her shawl. Her good eye teared up. “Bless you child, you’ve returned. Oh, praise be!”

There was something strange about her voice, as if she had a defect in her speech.

The woman dropped the shawl so she could put a veiny, gnarled hand against Prudence’s cheek. It was then that James saw what she’d been hiding.

Half of the woman’s face was missing.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-
O
NE

As Goody Hull led them inside to the single room that was her keeping room, her kitchen, and her bedroom alike, Prudence fought to get over her shock. She’d been battling her memories ever since they’d entered Winton. The houses where people had died, the commons where the Nipmuk had scalped, tortured, and murdered captives. The dead Nipmuk warriors outside, with their hollow, rotted stares.

And now, poor Goody Hull. Half her nose was gone, and her cheek had been crudely stitched together and then had healed in a mass of pink scar tissue that ran from her jawline to her neck. To turn her head required moving her entire body. It was all Prudence could do not to scream, or at least slap her hand over her mouth.

Take hold, woman. Goody Hull has suffered all you have, and threefold.

The old woman seated them on a rough bench next to a small, nearly extinct fire, then moved slowly to take a seat opposite. Prudence glanced at James. If he was horrified, he didn’t show it.

Goody Hull frowned. “I am poor, and I don’t have much to offer. And I can see you must be famished from the road.” She started to rise. “I could heat a little cider from the jug. That will warm your bones.”

“Please, good woman,” James said. He rose to his feet and eased her back down. “Don’t trouble yourself. We can see to that.”

Prudence was already up and pouring cider from the jug into a kettle, then shifting it to a hook over the fire. She tossed in two split pieces of firewood before she noticed that the wood basket was practically empty. The widow was watching her feed the fire with a miser’s careful stare.

“I’m so happy to see that you’ve remarried,” Goody Hull said, turning her gaze from the wood basket. “And to such a handsome young man too. You must be a fine man to win Prudie’s hand, Master—?”

“James Bailey,” he said quickly. He and Prudence exchanged glances.

“A good, strong name. What brings you to Winton? Are you settling here with my dear Prudie?”

“No, not just yet,” Prudence said.

The woman’s face fell. “I see.”

She had likely been hoping to serve Prudence and her new husband. The crippled widow would be even less use as a servant than Old John Porter, but Prudence found herself aching to offer the woman something, anything, to ease her poverty.

“Before I forget, let me settle your accounts,” James said. He reached into his cloak and removed from his purse three guineas, which Goody Hull stared at without taking from his outstretched hand.

“Accounts?” She began to reach for the money, then withdrew with a flinch, as if he were Satan offering forbidden fruit from the garden.

He took her wrist and pressed the coins into her palm. “Nay, it is yours,” he said smoothly. “There was a small bequest in Sir Benjamin’s will.”

“But Reverend Stone already gave me fifteen shillings.”

Fifteen shillings? Was that all Prudence’s brother-in-law had given the widow? Why hadn’t Prudence paid closer attention to the settling of the estate?

James’s expression darkened for a moment, before smoothing again. “Fifteen? Pray, pardon me. I thought you’d already been paid thirty.” He fetched another half crown and five silver pennies, which he added to the gold coins already in the widow’s hand. “There, now you have the full bequest.”

Goody Hull stared at the money through her good eye, her ruined mouth slack. Her voice trembled. “I don’t understand.”

“There was apparently some mistake,” Prudence said. “This is the rest of the money.”

“But it’s so much.”

“Nevertheless, it’s yours,” James said. “In gratitude for years of service to Sir Benjamin and his family. He wanted to leave you something.”

“Oh! ’Twill make such a difference. A tremendous difference indeed.”

The widow rose shakily to her feet. She opened a small cedar box sitting in a brick niche next to the hearth and dropped the coins in one by one. Prudence gave James a grateful smile. He shrugged, but looked pleased.

“It has been so long,” Goody Hull told Prudence when she returned. “I never saw you after that day in Winton, when my Peter was killed by the savages. He was a good man. A fine man.”

“Is that when you were injured?” Prudence asked.

Goody Hull lifted her shawl and held it up to her face. Her good eye stared into the fire.

“Many people suffered,” James said in a gentle voice. “Don’t be ashamed for what happened to you. Be grateful that the good Lord spared your life.”

It was the perfect thing to say, because Goody Hull lowered the shawl slowly. “Pray forgive an old woman her vanities, Master Bailey.”

He reached across and squeezed her hand.

James gave Prudence a significant look.
Now.

She swallowed hard. She had to do this, she had to revisit those days, even if it meant tearing off scabs and opening wounds only partly healed.

“Do you remember who told us to return to Winton?” Prudence asked the old woman.

“Of course. It was those treacherous beasts in Sachusett. They said we’d be safe.”

“No, it wasn’t the Indians. We were on the road to Springfield and some English riders came up.
They
told us to return. They said King Philip was attacking Springfield and we’d be safer at home.”

“That’s right, I’d forgotten that,” the old woman said. “It was the militia. And only a few riders. The rest had gone on ahead to Springfield.”

“I was in a carriage, feeding my child, and I didn’t see who it was. Do you remember who told us?”

Goody Hull frowned. “I can’t remember. Sir Benjamin was arguing with them, I remember that. It was someone from Boston.”

“Captain Knapp?”

“I—I’m not sure. Perhaps. I didn’t know the man at the time. I only met him later, when he came to Winton after the attack. A brave man. He charged into the meetinghouse and rescued us.”

Yes, but only after an awful siege that had lasted a day, a night, and a day. By then, Prudence was already in captivity and miles away, had already seen such horrors. The memory of that day was like a hand squeezing her heart, and suddenly she had a hard time breathing.

Prudence had awakened at dawn to the sound of a hollow thump. Still half-asleep, at first she thought it was distant thunder. It was September, and the weather was unusually hot and humid for the lateness of the season. But then a scream cut through the air, and she was instantly awake, reaching for her husband with one hand and her daughter’s cradle with the other. Benjamin was already sitting upright and grabbing his boots.

Two more thumps. This time it was unmistakable. Musket fire.

Benjamin raced downstairs to grab his guns, while Prudence pounded on doors to wake the servants. Young Ellen came staggering into the hallway, hand over her mouth, eyes wide. She was only twelve, a local girl who had been hired to help with Mary. From the room down the hall emerged Benjamin’s manservant from London, a young fellow named Jonathan Brown. He went downstairs to help Benjamin with the guns, while Ellen stayed terrified and trembling with Prudence and the baby.

“They’re going to kill us!” Ellen kept screaming.

Prudence propped Mary on her hip with one hand and used the other to give the girl a good shake. “Keep your wits. You must be calm.”

As soon as Prudence had the servants up and dressed, she hurried to the window. Benjamin and Jonathan stood on the front porch below her, shouting at people to take refuge in the house. English men and women were racing back and forth across the commons, pursued by Indians.

There were at least fifty young men in the Nipmuk raiding party, armed with muskets, hatchets, stone clubs, bows and arrows, and even rusty swords. Most wore nothing but loincloths. Several had surrounded Goodman Halpern, who was dressed in his nightclothes, and they smashed at him with their musket butts, jeering.

The Nipmuk had already set fire to three houses on the opposite side of the green, and this was presumably where the people fleeing across the commons had come from. A pair of Indians were pushing a wagon filled with burning hay up against the wall of another house. Two women had opened the upstairs window of the house in question and hurled down bedpans, pots, wooden ladles—anything they could get their hands on to drive away the enemy and their wagon of burning hay.

Meanwhile, in the commons, Goodman Halpern struggled to break free from his tormentors. Blood streamed from a cut above his eye, but he was still on his feet.

“Over here!” Benjamin shouted. He and Jonathan strode toward him with muskets leveled at the Indians.

Halpern spotted them and tried to get loose. He had taken two steps toward the Cotton house when an Indian stepped behind him with a blacksmith’s hammer and landed a crushing blow on the back of his skull. Halpern fell. The Indian stood over him, smashing at the man’s head again and again while his companions screamed in delight.

Prudence had gaped in horror. She recognized the killer. His name was Nimposet, one of the sachem’s half brothers, and she’d spoken to him many times. He would come to her house to trade honeycomb or a basket of wild leeks for a pair of wool socks or a few nails. Once, when her horse had come up lame in the middle of a rainstorm, he and another Indian had appeared wearing friendly grins and offered to carry her into Winton so she wouldn’t have to walk on the muddy road.

What, in the name of all that was holy, had turned Nimposet into a murderer?

Benjamin and Jonathan hurried across the green, too late now for Halpern, but maybe in time to rescue a few of the others. They lifted their muskets and fired. Neither shot hit. Several Nipmuk, led by Nimposet, made as if to charge.

Ellen was screaming again. Prudence handed Mary to the girl, who almost dropped the child, and ran downstairs after her husband and the boy, determined to stand by their side rather than cower indoors in fear.

At that moment, a disturbance sounded near the meetinghouse. Half the Englishmen in town were in Springfield, trying to relieve the siege, but several of the remaining men were gathering with swords and muskets, while others fled the burning houses to take refuge in the meetinghouse. Nimposet and his fellows turned to face this new threat.

At first Benjamin wanted to set off to help, but they were completely cut off by the main body of the enemy. And several villagers had spotted the armed men in front of the Cotton house and were now racing in their direction, screaming for help.

The next hour was a horror. The Nipmuk lit one house after another on fire. The English inside fled their burning homes and tried to reach the safety of those buildings being held against the savage assault. Several made it safely to the Cotton house. Others fell, heads split open, throats slit, musket fire cutting them down. One boy reached the house after surviving the gauntlet, only to die a few minutes later as his life’s blood emptied on Prudence’s floor.

Inside the Cotton house, fear and bewilderment raged as hot as the fires around the commons. Women screamed for their dead children, and children for their parents. Men and boys fired from windows or out the door and drove away Indians trying to set fire to the house. Prudence tended to wounds. Some women helped her, while others sat with dazed expressions on their blood-spattered faces.

Sweet heavens. Why now? There hadn’t been so much as a single shot fired between Winton and Sachusett during the first several months of the war, and regular meetings had taken place between the two sides to reassure each other of peaceful intent. Why would Mikmonto send his warriors to attack now?

She found her husband. “Should we fight our way to the meetinghouse?”

Benjamin gave a grim shake of the head. “We have four men, counting Jonathan. We’ll never make it.”

“The women can fight too.” Prudence glanced to the center of the room, where more than a dozen people huddled. “Some of them, at least. Goody Wentworth and Goody Jones, plus myself. That makes seven, counting the men.”

“We only have three muskets—we’re a gun short already.”

“A sword, then. A poker from the fire.” Prudence’s mind cast about desperately for ideas. “Perchance we could overwhelm some Indians next time they attack and take their weapons.”

“No. We wait here.” His voice was firm, with no room for argument. “If the powder holds up, we can fight them off until either they exhaust themselves, or we’re relieved from Springfield.”

What relief would that be, she wondered bitterly. Springfield was fighting its own battle, and she could scarcely believe that anyone had escaped Winton in order to warn them, anyway.

The assault continued on and off all day. More houses went up in flames, one by one, until thick black smoke smothered the sky. The air inside was thick with the smell of blood and sweat and the stench of the dead boy, who had lost control of his bowels as he died. But nobody wanted to put him outside. During lulls in the fighting, the Indians were torturing captives and abusing corpses.

At night, the Nipmuk made several more attempts to burn the house. Once, a ball of flaming rags caught the roof on fire, but Prudence had earlier led a silent expedition after dark into the backyard, and they’d filled every vessel in the house with water. They punched a hole in the roof, climbed out, and doused the flames.

When dawn returned, they woke to see the meetinghouse on fire and people fleeing ahead of the inferno. As they watched in horror, villagers came streaming out only to be clubbed or hacked to death. For a long time, the survivors inside the Cotton house could only watch, weeping and unable to help.

Prudence could barely stand. Mary had been wailing for two hours, and nothing she could do would comfort the child. Not even nursing would calm her.

Suddenly, someone screamed that the back of the house was on fire. While they’d been watching the meetinghouse, several Indians had somehow come up behind and pushed another burning cart against the walls. Benjamin and Jonathan rushed out, but a hail of bullets drove them back.

Soon the house was on fire all around them. Smoke choked the air. They tried to go out the front, but more Indians had gathered and were dancing around, whooping and taunting. One by one the villagers were murdered as they fled the burning building: women, children, and the elderly. A few they dragged away, and for no apparent reason. These they kicked and jabbed but didn’t kill.