Flight of the Sparrow (35 page)

Eliza shakes her head. “No, I did not hear it.”

“No matter,” says Constance. “I have heard that savages have many names. To confuse us.”

Mary leans forward. “Was there someone with her? A young woman servant, perhaps?”

Eliza looks at her. “I heard naught of one. But what matter is it? They are all devils, are they not?”

Maria reaches over and places her hand on Mary’s arm. “Are you ill?”

“Nay.” Mary tries to make herself smile but her lips feel as if they have hardened into a grimace. She thinks of Alawa, of her deft fingers tying a reed mat to the wall of a wetu, of their gentleness as they smoothed and braided Mary’s hair.

“I thought perhaps the heat—”

“I am well enough.” Mary shifts her arm so that Maria’s hand falls away. She imagines Weetamoo swept downstream in a churning river, sinking under the surface of the water.

“I have heard it said that pagan women marry whom they please,” Constance is saying. “This one was a slattern with many husbands, one of them brother to Philip. Her last was a Narragansett king.”

“He too has been captured and executed,” Eliza says. “His head was carried on a pike to Hartford.”

“Aye, I heard news of that,” says Constance. “He had one of those heathen names no one can pronounce. Quinny-nap or Quinny-hog.” She pinches her face into a smirk.

“Maybe it was Quinny-ninny,” Eliza suggests. The women giggle.

“Quinnapin,” Mary says.

All the women look at her.

She gets to her feet, for her eyes are burning and her heart races in her chest. “His name was Quinnapin,” she says. “He was once kind to me.” She leaves them gawping as she walks away. She does not care where she goes. She wants only to be alone.

She heads toward the harbor, thinking of Weetamoo dandling her babe and dancing in the circle. Thinking of Quinnapin with his wide shoulders and proud bearing, of the long belts of wampum swinging on his chest as he danced. She remembers his generosity as she wept on the shore of the river. She imagines his fine head cut from his shoulders and mounted on a pike. Her stomach churns.

She bends and vomits into the gutter.

•   •   •

S
he cannot confess her distress to anyone in Boston, for there is no one who will sympathize. She briefly considers confiding in her sister, but knows that Hannah is currently being courted by a man from Wenham and Mary doubts she will want to resurrect memories of her captivity. Even if Mary does tell her, she doubts Hannah will appreciate her attachment to James.

She prays for a swift healing of her spirit. But the days go by and she continues to brood. One night she dreams she is accompanying Weetamoo back to her home village.

Alawa sits beside her on a raft on which they are crossing a raging river. Suddenly a wave comes up and sweeps them off the wooden timbers. Instantly, they are sucked beneath the boiling, gray current. Mary watches Weetamoo and Alawa thrash in the water, their long braids writhing, their faces clotted with terror, even as Mary sinks to her own grave.

She wakes gasping and bathed in sweat, her heart pounding. It is a moment before she is able to reassure herself that she is alive,
that the vivid images came not from her memory, but from a dream. Yet all the next day she cannot shed the powerful feeling of breathless choking. The dream seems to her more than a dream; she becomes convinced it was a visitation of some sort—a warning of what would have happened to her had she stayed with the Indians. In the middle of the afternoon it strikes her suddenly that in arranging for the ransom she had not wanted, James had once again saved her life. She would likely now be dead if it had not been for him.

The fact that she has sworn she will never see James again twists her heart. Yet she consoles herself that in sealing the covenant with Increase, she has finally paid James in kind.

•   •   •

T
here are more public hangings of Indians. Mary hears rumors that many, including Philip’s wife and son, have been captured and sold into slavery. Then comes word that Philip himself has been killed—shot by an Indian in a swamp near Providence. His body was drawn and quartered and his head set on a pike and displayed in Plymouth.

The Council declares that the Indian hostilities are over.

Mary longs for word of James. She desperately wants some assurance that he is safe and well provided for. But she cannot make inquiries, cannot even show an interest in the fate of the Indians who came in under the amnesty. All she can do is concentrate on writing her narrative, as she pledged. All the news events must wash over her now, as if they had never occurred.

Yet whenever she hears a whisper of news about Praying Indians, she listens closely, longing to ask questions but holding her tongue for fear any inquiry might risk James’s life. She thinks often of the Indians confined to Deer Island during the hostilities. She wonders if those who survived have been allowed to return to their homes. Then, in September while in the marketplace, Mary overhears a conversation
between a cobbler and the wife of a shipbuilder as she looks over his wares. The wife is boasting that one of her husband’s ships has been used to transport captured Indians to Barbados, where they will be sold as slaves.

“I warrant few will outlast the trip,” the woman says. “’Tis said Indians make poor slaves and even poorer sailors.”

The cobbler nods and feigns a polite laugh, though Mary notes his expression shows little interest.

“The lucky ones are confined in Natick,” the woman continues, fingering a blue velvet shoe embroidered in gold and silver. “My husband says they keep a close eye on ’em there. No Indian can step outside the town limit, on pain of death. ’Tis too dangerous to allow them to come and go.”

The cobbler draws the woman’s attention to a pair of red and yellow silk brocade shoes, and smiles when she emits a gratifying
Ahhhh!

Mary moves on to a fabric stall where bolts of bright cloth are stacked in a colorful wall behind the vendor. She prays that James was not forced aboard that ship. Her fingers shake as she examines a length of cotton printed all over with small red flowers. She wonders if he has even come in under the amnesty. Perhaps he fled north to be with his children.

She thinks about the cruelty of a law that restricts Indians to one town. She knows how bitterly they abhor confinement. She recalls James’s harrowing description of his brief imprisonment in Boston. She remembers him telling her that many Indians believe they will die if they cannot freely walk the earth. In the midst of her own captivity, Mary found a singular pleasure in moving about as she wished. Her greatest misery, apart from Sarah’s death, was on the few days when she was closely confined in Weetamoo’s wetu.

Then one morning the town crier calls out the news that James the Printer and two hundred other rebellious Indians have come in and submitted to the authorities. The town buzzes with excitement. Mary is
surprised, for she had not known that James was famous enough to create such interest. She longs to know more, to find out where he is. But there is no one she can ask except Increase Mather. She considers showing him what she has written, on the pretext of seeking his approval. When they are alone, she could ask after James’s welfare. But before she is able to implement her plan, Joseph finds her pages.

Mary does not know how he found the box, for she hid it well behind a loose wainscot board near their bed. She suspects that Joss saw her conceal it and told his father. Ever since his return from the wilderness, the boy has been plagued by bouts of unpredictable behavior; sometimes he is secretive and sometimes unruly. Joseph has suggested that the Indians hexed him, but Mary assures him that is not their way. “More likely ’twas one of the Boston gossips,” she says smartly, and then regrets it when her husband hushes her with a warning frown.

“These ‘gossips,’ as you brand them, have only our welfare in mind,” he says. “Please remember they are the very ones who contributed their monies to your ransom.”

She closes her mouth and bows her head, for this seems to be what Joseph requires of her since her return. He has long since stopped pestering her for details of her ordeal, though she knows he still believes her silence cloaks a guilt of such enormity that she can never be forgiven it.

She finds him with the box on a cloudy afternoon in late September. She has just come from visiting Abigail Whiteman, invalided after a fall. She carries a basket of food that Abigail generously pressed on her. Joseph is seated at the table before the open box, poring over her pages.

She is so startled she drops the basket. A pork loin rolls out from its cloth onto the floor, but she ignores it. She rips the page from his hands, gathers up those scattered across the table surface, pushes them into the box and firmly shuts it. There is no thought in her,
only anger. She is trembling with fury. She clutches the box to her breast, so outraged she cannot speak.

Joseph rises. His face has gone pale and he looks very solemn. He reaches for her, but Mary, the box clutched to her breast, backs toward the open door. Then he speaks, and the timbre of his voice startles her with its tenderness.

“I had not known,” he says softly and she thinks she sees a tear rise in his eye. “Why did you not tell me?”

She shakes her head, for she has no answer to his question. She sees that she wounds him still further with her silence, but she does not know how to mend it. Her mouth is as sealed as a tomb.

“I had not thought your time was so hard there,” he says. “You have been sorely tried. Yet you have been the Lord’s faithful servant.” He moves around the table to her and this time Mary does not step away. She lets him touch her—her shoulder, her arm. He raises his hand and strokes her cheek. She begins to tremble. Not this time with fear or fury, but with grief. Wracking shudders course through her as a great sorrow overwhelms her.

He takes her in his arms. It is the first time he has embraced her since her return, and it undoes her. She presses her face into his chest, sobbing. She feels his hand caressing her back in long, almost amorous strokes. He whispers something in her ear that she cannot hear. When at last she gathers herself enough to lift her head, she sees him looking down at her with a sorrowful expression that matches her own.

“I am sorry you did not feel you could tell me these things,” he says. “How faithful you were to our child! What courage you showed in caring for her.”

Mary’s tears well anew and she wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. She feels as limp as wet cloth, as if grief itself has melted her bones. And for a fleeting moment, she has the absurd wish that she could tell her husband about James.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Summer
slides into fall, and Mary works on her pages every day, striving to finish the narrative so she can present it to Increase. The leaves turn crimson and gold and the nightly temperature drops; Joseph begins to spend every evening with friends. As soon as he has consumed the simple meal Mary prepares, he leaves the house, claiming he must be about the Lord’s business. Sometimes he does not return until nearly morning. Despite her own exhaustion, Mary dutifully waits up for him, writing as long as her eyes will allow, and then sewing by the light of a candle while Joss and Marie sleep on their pallets in the room’s shadows. She wonders bitterly what sort of business compels him to abandon his family night after night. She imagines gathering enough courage to demand an explanation.

Instead, one evening in October as he is leaving to call on the Mathers, she asks if he will take a message to Increase. “Tell him I am ready to show my pages.”

Joseph blinks. “I did not know you were so near finishing. Should I not read them first to determine if they’re satisfactory? ’Twould be a sorry business to trouble Increase if they are poorly done.”

She feels a pinch of anger. Why must Joseph always question her abilities? Why must he always prove an obstacle to her wishes? She knows, even as the rebellious questions rise in her, that he is merely doing his duty as head of the family.

She sees that he is waiting for an answer. “I have done the best I can. ’Tis time he saw them.”

His frown deepens, but she perceives it is more impatience than annoyance, for he keeps glancing at the door, eager to be gone. “I may be a good while,” he says. “You need not wait up for me this night.”

She does wait up, as he knows she will, sitting at the hearth, knitting a pair of stockings from discarded thread. Though the night is cold, she does not light a fire. Joseph has denied her that comfort, reminding her that the home is not theirs and they are not in a position to overly concern themselves with fleshly ease.

What he means is that
they are poor.
Until she was captured Mary had never wanted for warmth or food or any necessary thing. Since then, she has become well acquainted with deprivation—of food, of comfort, of safety—but she has not imagined it would extend past her return to English society. It has not escaped her notice that the comforts Joseph deprives her of in the name of household economy are ones he freely partakes of by visiting friends. She feels a dark and tangled bitterness growing in her.