Flight of the Sparrow (20 page)

“Please,” she gasps, falling to her knees, “I beg you as a Christian, let this boy lie here by your fire.”

James does not answer, but plucks a blanket from the ground and wraps it around himself.

The youth tries to rise but cannot. He is wracked with tremors; his naked feet and legs are blue with cold. “He has the flux,” Mary says, trying to push herself to her feet and staggering from weakness. “He has been cast out of his wetu.”

James frowns. “Then why do you ask me to take him in? His captor will hunt for him and be angry if he finds him with me.”

“Please,” she says. “He will die without help.”

“What is he to you?”

The question takes her by surprise. She has not given any thought to the boy’s circumstance or situation—only to his condition. “He is nothing to me—save a fellow sufferer,” she says. “Please. Can you not find compassion for him, even though you feel naught for me?”

He gives her a long look, with that penetrating gaze that has so often unsettled her, before turning his attention to the youth. He places a thick mat of skins next to the fire and together they carry him there. James covers him—tenderly, she thinks—with a heavy bearskin. Mary stands aside as he offers him a bowl of thin broth. When the boy is unable to eat it himself, James turns to her.

“You are his protector,” he says, pushing the bowl and a crudely shaped spoon into her hands. “It is your duty to feed him.”

And so Mary kneels beside the boy, whose name she still does not know, and patiently feeds him broth until he falls asleep under her ministrations. Then she puts down the bowl, sinks back on her heels. She feels a wave of vertigo and drops her head into her hands.

“You are weary,” James says. “You must sleep.” She looks up to find him sitting on a mat gazing at her.

He gestures to the furs stacked on the platform. “This storm will last the night. It is warm here and you will be safe.”

Her heart begins to beat too fast. She knows she should not stay a moment longer. Yet she cannot bear to leave.

A gust thumps against the sides of the wetu. The wind shrieks and rattles the door flap. “You will stay,” James says firmly. He rises, hangs another hide over the doorway, securing it tightly so no draft can enter, then pulls two more hides from the pile on the platform and gives them to her, gesturing for her to lie down. She is too exhausted to refuse. She rolls onto her side and pulls the heavy furs over her, relaxing into the warmth. She hears the ragged breathing of the youth, and is aware of James moving quietly around the wetu. Later, he lies down a few feet away. She hears him murmuring Indian words in the darkness and wonders if he is praying. His voice seems to come from a great distance as she drifts into sleep.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Mary
wakes in the middle of the night. She lies on her back, looking up at the smoke hole, wondering for a moment where she is. Then she remembers. The wind has died away, but she knows from the rapid ticking sounds outside that snow is still falling. She sits up and slides from beneath the furs to check on the youth. Low firelight plays over his features. He is still insensible, but when she puts her hand on his brow, it is cooler than it was a few hours before, which tells her that his fever has broken. She slips outside.

Snowflakes drift down, catching on the tatters of her cloak and in her hair. Shivering, she makes her way into the trees. Her moccasin-clad feet make no sound. She squats behind a rock and relieves herself.

As she stands, she sees someone moving through the trees to her right. She holds her breath and does not move, becoming one with the rock and the surrounding trees. There are two of them—warriors acting as sentries, watching the encampment through the night. They speak in low voices. She understands only a few words, but they alarm her, for they tell her that Philip is on the verge of
surrendering, that the English soldiers will show no mercy. They expect all the men in the camp will be slain and the women will be violated.

Mary quickly makes her way back to the wetu. She is shaking, but not with cold. She recalls Elizabeth’s warning the night before her death—it is as if her sister sits beside her still, and she can hear her voice:
“Before they kill the women, they defile them.”
Elizabeth had been talking about Indians. Mary remembers her sick feeling at the words, her long-standing dread of capture, of how certain she had been that she would be assaulted and defiled. She remembers how she vowed that she would rather be slain than captured by Indians. Yet she has been captured, but she has not been assaulted. Despite her days of hunger and toil, she lives. Even with her lowly status as a slave and a captive, even with Monoco’s carnal interest, no Indian has molested her. Her virtue is intact.

She pushes through the door flap, finds her way back to her pallet, and slides under the furs, still shivering. Her mind keeps spinning and she cannot sleep. She tries to untangle her conflicting feelings. She hated and feared the Indians, but after three months in their company, she has grown accustomed to their ways. They freely share their food and shelter—something she suspects no English soldier would do with an Indian captive. She has suffered much privation and hardship, but no more than her mistress, whose child has also died, and who has no more to eat than Mary. She has been given no advantages, yet most of the time she has as much freedom and respect as any Indian woman.

In his sleep, James rolls toward her on his mat. She watches him in the semidarkness, studies the contours of his face in the glow of the fire’s embers. She thinks of his many acts of kindness—from cutting the rope from her neck, to protecting her from Weetamoo’s wrath. She wonders why he chose to protect her. She can only conclude that it is God’s doing, that the Lord has sent him to be her rescuer and friend.

Still shivering, she turns restlessly, trying to find a comfortable position.

“You are shaking.” His voice startles her; she had believed he was asleep. Instead, he moves toward her. “Come.” He wraps an arm around the skins that enclose her and pulls her toward him. She tries to murmur a protest, but it comes out as no more than a sigh. He draws back the bearskin and rolls her onto her side so that she is facing away and he presses himself to her, his chest against her back, his thighs along the backs of her legs, his shins touching her calves. Then he pulls another bearskin over both of them.

She knows it is wicked to lie there, that letting him warm her can lead too easily to wantonness and sin, that she should rise at once and flee. But his body is warm and strong and she is freezing. And so she lies, absorbing his warmth until her shivering stops.

“It is your thoughts that torment you,” James says quietly. “You must share them, else they will give you no peace.”

Tears spring to her eyes. “With you?” she whispers.

He is silent. She feels his heart beat against her spine. After a moment, he asks, “Am I not as good a friend as you have in these troubled times?”

She knows in that moment that he is as good a friend as she has ever had in her life. She begins to tell him, speaking into the darkness thoughts she has never imagined putting into words. It is a confession unlike any she has ever made—cleansing and thorough and nakedly honest. She tells him of her confused feelings about Indians, how disturbed she was at first, but how many of their ways now draw her. She tells him how she is attracted to the dances and strange songs, the power of the great drums, even the wildness of their grief. How she admires their stoic patience and generosity. How appealing are the freedoms their women enjoy, how surprised she is by the self-control of their men.

“You do not understand why you have not been raped.” He states the question that has lain in her mind for weeks, states it so
simply and straightforwardly that for a moment she wonders if she said the words herself. No one in her memory has ever been so direct about sexual matters. She cannot think of how to form a reply.

“Is that not so?” She feels his breath warm the back of her neck. His fingertips brush her arm as lightly as a butterfly’s wing. “Have you not expected your virtue to be taken by a heathen?” As he says the last word, there is amusement in his voice, though she detects no derision. He is so close she can smell his breath, a sweet pungent scent like sassafras.

She shrugs, a movement intended to relieve the tension in her neck and shoulders, as much as to acknowledge his point.

“Indian men do not rape their captives,” he says. “They adopt them as wives and daughters.”

“Am I to be adopted then?” she asks, her voice a whisper. She welcomes the heat radiating from his skin, though she is warm now and knows she ought to move away.

He laughs gently. “I think you would like that,” he says. “But I believe Philip has other plans.”

She thinks of poor Ann Joslin, pictures her brutal death. “Do you think he will have me killed?” Her mouth is dry. She can barely speak.

“No, no.” His hand, which hovers just above her arm, takes hers. His skin is warm, his fingers sure and strong. “No one will do you any harm. Have you not seen how I protect you?”

She does not pull her fingers from his. They curl into the warmth of his palm. “I have seen it,” she whispers. “What I do not know is
why.
”

He is silent for a long time. She can hear her heart beat in her ears. She wonders if he is going to confess his feelings for her. But when he finally speaks, he says, “Once, a few years after he baptized me, Mr. Eliot told me a secret. He said that God always weeps when men and women are cruel—to each other, to animals. To the earth
itself. He said that Christ’s kingdom will only come when we learn to be deeply kind. He told me to remember that while we draw breath, there will always be some way we can show kindness.”

She does not know what to say. These are not the words she expected. Yet they move her, as if she has just witnessed a strange miracle.

“What will become of me?” she asks, after a time.

“Philip will redeem you to the English,” James says. “When he is ready.”

Her mind races. What of
us
?
she thinks suddenly. What will become of this strange, unseemly friendship between an English wife and an Indian? No civilized Englishman or -woman will ever accept it. Yet she has come to a place in her heart where she feels she cannot live without it.

She is silent for so long that she hears James’s breathing lengthen and knows he has slipped back into sleep, still holding her hand.

•   •   •

S
he wakes on her side, in the same coiled position in which she fell asleep. James no longer lies behind her. She sits up. The youth is moaning softly in his sleep, but James is not in the wetu.

She feels a wave of shame as she recalls what transpired in the middle of the night. Though there was no carnal act between them, the intimacy of her conversation with James distresses her. Mary cannot recall even one exchange with Joseph in which she so nakedly revealed her thoughts.

She pushes off the bearskin and gets to her feet. She is bending over the youth, trying to determine if his fever has returned, when the door flap opens and James steps into the wetu.

“You must go,” he says before she has a chance to speak. “Weetamoo is looking for you. They say she believes you have run off.”

“Run off?” Mary presses a hand to her forehead. “Where would I run to?”

He shrugs. “I do not know her thinking. But you must return to her wetu at once. She cannot find you here.”

She understands what he has not said: that it will go badly not only for her but also for him if Weetamoo believes he is involved in her disappearance.

“I came here for help.” She gestures to the youth. “The boy was dying. An old woman advised me to come here.”

“
I
know why you came.” His gaze does not leave her face. As if he has spoken what neither of them would ever say aloud:
The youth was not the true reason.
“You must go.
Now.
”

Her eyes fill instantly and unaccountably with tears, as if he has opened the ground of her heart and set free a hidden spring. She nods and hurries to the door. Her forearm brushes his as she passes. She looks up, into his face. “May I come tomorrow to see how the youth fares?”

“Of course. If Weetamoo consents.” He lifts the flap and she steps out into the bright morning.

•   •   •

S
he is not free to visit James’s wetu for two days—such is the fickleness of Weetamoo’s demands. Her release comes when a warrior asks her to knit a pair of stockings to fit him. She looks for permission to Weetamoo, who signals that Mary might do as she wishes, that she may once again come and go as she pleases. It occurs to Mary that perhaps they are equally weary of each other’s presence.

Mary goes at once to James’s wetu and is pleased to find that the youth has come out of his stupor and is recovering. She talks with him for a while, cautioning him to obey James in all things, reminding him that he would be dead if James had not taken him in.