The Pilgrim (19 page)

We shared our dinner with the Indians, who especially relished eating oatmeal porridge. Weston's men opened a tun of Aqua Vitae; some sailors opened another. Almost everyone got drunk. Night drew on. I watched scores and scores of drunken savages and Englishmen frolic about four huge fires. Butts danced a jig. Wittuwamat hopped on one foot. As his tall, robust men danced with their heads thrown back, they sang together in high voices. One of Weston's men threw two armfuls of brush upon the fire nearest me. The flames flared up. By their light, I spied two naked sailors practicing the abominable vice in the dry, brown grass.

At midnight, when we sent the savages from us, we gave each of them some trifle. Wittuwamat received a pair of stockings. He offered to trade me three skins for my knife, and again I refused. Then he bade us farewell, with a promise that he and his men would soon come again with more skins to truck.

It rained for the next two days. Rigdale and I wore our canvas suits. We slept and ate under our leaky roof. Just before dawn on the second morning, he said to me, “Dear friend, I will die in Wessagusset.”

I said, “God forbid!”

Rigdale said, “Such thoughts about death come to me in the night. It came to me upon a spring night that my wife, Ann, would soon die. I said nothing to her but savoured each fleeting moment we had left. I often asked her to sing. She had a sweet voice and sang our babe to sleep. My poor babe! Little Joan. I did not foresee her death.

“My darling Ann died that very summer, on Mid-Summer Eve. Lying abed, she said, ‘I have a frightful headache,' and fell asleep in the Lord.”

I said, “Would that I had savoured each fleeting moment of my dear Sarah's last days.”

• • •

It snowed on the twenty-fourth of October. It was the earliest day of snow that I could remember anywhere. We built fires in each house between the two rows of sleeping men. The houses filled with smoke. It drifted up through the chinks between the clapboards in the roofs. I wore my cloak over my canvas suit. I still shivered. Rigdale's teeth chattered. He and I trudged through the drifted snow to fetch brush and logs for our fire. Our feet swelled from the cold.

During this time, Rigdale, Pratt, and I again kept the Sabbath. Rigdale could not persuade anyone else to join us. He said to the men, “Take heed! Harken unto me! You will perish if you do not obey the Fourth Commandment to keep the Sabbath holy.”

Butts, who was mizzled on Aqua Vitae, replied to him, “Keeping the Sabbath will not keep death at bay. Sooner or later, we will all die. I would rather frolic playing Gleek on the Sabbath than pray it away.”

I said, “‘Bay' and ‘away' and ‘pray.' You speak in rhyme, sirrah.”

He said, “I will do so again. Let me see. Aqua Vitae makes a poet out of me. If I could read and write, I would drink Aqua Vitae all the day and write poems about playing Gleek. What rhymes with Gleek?”

“Shriek.”

“‘Shriek!' said Death to me when I lost to him at Gleek. So I shrieked…What comes next? I cannot think. Give me more to drink.”

I said, “Another rhyme! That makes four!”

Butts said, “They come to me all on their own.”

Rigdale said, “Enough of this childish nonsense! We were talking about the Fourth Commandment.”

I said, “I would rather play with words. God forgive me, I sometimes fear that I love the English language more than I love Christ.”

Butts said, “Well spoken, sir! Give me to drink again.”

I said, “Away, soused herring, pickled in Aqua Vitae!”

On Christmas day, the men feasted and frolicked in a heathenish fashion, only wanting roasted boar to make their celebration complete. Rigdale, Pratt, and I sought the Lord's guidance with a solemn fast.

Rigdale said, “All our victuals will soon be spent. We will starve as punishment for our recklessness.”

Pratt said, “How did we do such a thing?”

I said, “'Tis because we are living for the moment, without regard for the future or the after life. That is a grievous sin.”

Rigdale and I fetched firewood every afternoon. My wet shoes froze stiff in the snow, and I wrung blood from my stockings when I pulled them off.

On Thursday afternoon, the twenty-third of January, the
sachem
Wittuwamat, his interpreter Memsowit, and twelve other Indians came again to trade beaver skins for our Irish beef. We had none left. I again refused to trade Wittuwamat my dagger in its green leathern scabbard for four beaver skins.

Memsowit told me that his third wife, for whom he had traded a dog, had been very ill.

He said, “My dream cured her cough.”

I said, “Your dream? How could your dream cure her cough?”

“I will tell you. One night, I sat up with her. Her coughing kept her awake. I fell asleep. I dreamed that the ground rose near her head, where she lay coughing. I saw that a crow was flying about under the ground and I said, ‘Do not hide yourself, brother crow, I see you.' The crow stuck his head out of the ground and opened his beak. He had a snake's forked tongue.

“I said, ‘I saw you, brother crow. You were flying about under the ground while my wife coughed.' The crow flew out of the ground, opened his beak again, and stuck out his snake's tongue. Then he died. I woke up. My wife stopped coughing and fell asleep right away. She got completely well. My dream cured her.”

I said, “God cured her,” and he said, “I believe in what I can see. I see my dreams. I cannot see your God so I do not believe in Him. When I see Him, I will believe in Him, but not until then.”

“In what do you believe?”

“I believe in Spirits of the Light and Spirits of the Dark. I also believe in the
manitu
.”

“What is the
manitu
?”

“The
manitu
is the spirit that dwells in everything. In stones, in fish, in the stars.”

I said, “Have you seen all these spirits?”

“Others have seen them. Have you seen your God?”

“I have faith that by His grace I will see Him after I die, when I will be with Him forever.”

He said, “You know not what you are talking about.”

Butts challenged Wittuwamat to another game of hubbub. Butts again wagered his Monmouth cap, and Wittuwamat wagered his knife that had the face of a woman carved upon its handle. Wittuwamat lost. Memsowit translated his response: “I will have my revenge.”

• • •

After the Indians departed, it snowed for three days. The falling snow hid the hills to the south and west. The islands in the bay to the north were blotted out. When it ceased snowing, the water froze in patches. The ebb and flow of the tide lifted the ice high upon the beach, then let it fall in pieces in the inlets and upon the salt marshes. Wolves howled in the forest. Flocks of crows flew in circles above the stockade.

Everyone feasted day and night. I broke my oath to Abigail and drank Aqua Vitae with the rest. God forgive us, Rigdale, Pratt, and I got drunk for the second time on the Sabbath. We were seized with a diabolical recklessness induced by our terror of the vast snowy forest and the Indians. We were startled by the breaking boughs, weighed down with snow, that of a sudden fell to earth. Each crack sounded like a musket shot.

The Indians came to us at all hours of the day. They piled their bows and arrows upon blankets without the south gate. We put our muskets aside. They traded their peltry for liquor, axes, and the little round German brass bells they tied to the fringes of their leathern trousers. We heard the bells jangle whenever they walked across the glade in the deep snow toward the south gate.

Captain Green said, “They want us to become accustomed to their approach so they can attack us by surprise.”

The jangling bells in the stockade made us all anxious. I watched an Indian strip a blue English blanket from one of Green's sailors curled up in the mud. Like my fellow Englishmen, I was too weakened by hunger and too cowed to intervene. Sorely ashamed at feeling so helpless, I looked away. As my countrymen sat scattered about steaming pots filled with ground nuts or shellfish, the Indians often stole the victuals. I once saw Butts protest. An Indian threw a lump of frozen mud in his face. Butts crept away. I was sore ashamed for us all.

Green said to me, “I am a master of a ship and a good one, too. But I do not know how to assert my authority on land.” One day ten sentinels in the stockade got drunk and deserted their posts. Green did not punish them.

By the last week in February, we had spent almost all of our victuals. Memsowit told me that the Indians would no longer trade with us for their corn, saying that they had none to spare.

I was hungry all the time. My legs felt weak and were wracked with pains. If I moved too quickly, I became dizzy. My heart pounded in my breast. A mouthful of oatmeal porridge immediately made me feel stronger; my strength from eating it lasted about an hour. Then I was beset with lassitude. Between noon and one of the clock, I could not sit up straight but only bent over.

One morning, two men in my house fell out with each other over a bowl of porridge. Rigdale had just the strength enough to separate them. Rigdale divided the porridge in twain, and the men gobbled up their portions.

Rigdale and I joined the crowd on the beach nearest the stockade searching for shellfish. The clams there, which formerly seemed of infinite store, were most of them already consumed. By God's grace, I found eight of them frozen in the ice and swallowed their sandy flesh on the spot. Rigdale found nine more, three of which he gave to me.

To conserve our strength, we went to bed at sundown. The night was very cold. In spite of our fire, I shivered and lay awake, listening to my stomach rumble. I said, “I would be pleased to eat one raw egg.”

Rigdale said, “I love new laid eggs.”

I said, “Shall I give you some of this capon?”

“What capon is that?”

“God save me! I fell asleep for a moment and dreamed I was eating a roasted capon.”

In the days following, we all lived on ground nuts and acorns we digged up under the snow and the mussels, clams, and a few oysters we digged up on the beach. I twice went a-fowling, but there were no ducks or geese to be seen. I shot a squirrel in a pine tree and roasted it. Rigdale and I supped upon it without salt. It tasted sweet.

• • •

Green renewed his efforts to purchase victuals from the Indians. They refused. Green said, “I am determined to take by force what I can get in no other way.”

He gave orders to strengthen and perfect the stockade. The frightened men obeyed him.

All the entrances save the south gate were made fast. Ten sentinels, chosen by lot, again stood watch day and night. Before resorting to violence, Green sent a letter with a messenger named Tom Ford five-and-twenty miles through the forest, informing Governor Bradford of the dire straits we were in at Wessagusset and what he proposed to do. Ten days later, the Governor's answer arrived. He wrote,

Your course of action is not only in contravention of the laws of God, but is calculated to bring King James's policy to nought, both as respects the enlargement of his dominions and the propagation of the knowledge and law of God, and the glad tidings of salvation among the heathen.

Your case is no worse, if so bad, as that of Plymouth, where we have but little corn left and are compelled to sustain life on ground nuts and mussels, all of which you in Wessagusset have in great abundance. Yea, oysters also, which we at Plymouth sorely want.

Therefore, your plea of necessity cannot be maintained. If you have recourse to violence, those guilty of like violence will have to take care of yourselves and need look for no support from us at Plymouth. Moreover, if you escape the savages, you will not escape the gallows as soon as some special agent of the crown comes over to investigate.

Tom Ford also delivered the following letter from Abigail to me:

My darling Charles,

I know in my heart that my prayers will be answered and that we will be reunited!

Ford told me that you have grown a shaggy beard. Dearest Charles, please shave it off so that, with God's grace, I may once again behold your pitted face and be reminded of my beloved father's countenance.

Ford will give you a pint of corn from me. Consider it a present from me for your coming birthday. May it ease your hunger for a while. We live on a pint of corn a day and are fearful of an Indian attack. Still, I am grateful to God for bringing me to the Plymouth Plantation. He is working His will here in the wilderness and I feel part of it.

Darling Charles, a week ago Tuesday, I spake again with Master Brewster about the state of my soul. I told him that remorse and humiliation beset me because I wished my father to die before I caught his consumption.

Master Brewster said, “Increase your suffering, daughter! Let those three words of Scripture—‘Honor thy father'—bore into your soul like Pratt's auger. Abase yourself before God! Humiliate yourself! Suffer remorse until it is well nigh unbearable.

“Then,” said he, “of a sudden, the Holy Spirit will rise up within you, and you will truly repent and know that you are predestined to be saved. This revelation can happen to you at any time. It happened to me upon a summer morning in Leyden at my house on Sink Street. What joy!”

Since he spake to me, I have heaped remorse and humiliation on my soul while I await God's forgiveness.

My love to you, Abigail

March 6

I answered Abigail as follows:

Sweetheart,

I rejoice in your news. My own salvation is, God help me, furthest from my thoughts. I am trying only to survive.

Tom Ford will also deliver to you a brief letter I wrote you on the seventh of September. I always wear your handkerchief close to my heart.

Ford will relate to you in detail the dreadful circumstances that beset us here in Wessagusset. I am always cold and weak from hunger. The snow that hath fallen between the trees makes it difficult to search for ground nuts and roots, while the ice that covers the salt marches makes it almost impossible to dig up shellfish. We too fear an Indian attack.