Cape Cod

by William Martin

  They drank too much, molested Indian women, and were forced at last to hang one of their own for stealing Indian corn. When they made themselves servants to the Massachusetts in exchange for food, they earned the Indians’ contempt.

  About this time, the sachem Massasoit took to his deathbed. The Saints dispatched Edward Winslow to his side. Winslow found death to be no more than a massive case of constipation, which he cured with a physic. In thanks, Massasoit gave him warning: not only were the Massachusetts planning to rub out the Wessagusset colony, but Plymouth as well, and their sachem Witawawmut had visited both the Cummaquids and the Nausets to bring them into his alliance.

  Though Plymouth had no use for Weston’s men, they could ill afford war. True, they had enclosed their settlement in a great diamond-shaped stockade and at the highest point had built a blockhouse, which served also as meetinghouse, a place strong enough, in Ezra Bigelow’s words, to keep out both Satan and the savage. But there were no more than a hundred fifty in Plymouth, and the Indians still numbered in the thousands.

  So Myles Standish led an expedition north to cut off this Indian conspiracy at the root. He took only eight men, all the plantation could spare, but he made certain to take those who were reliable in a fight, Jack Hilyard among them.

  For several days, they lived at Wessagusset, in the same miserable conditions as the other whites, and endured the insults of the Massachusetts, who walked freely through the settlement, brandishing knives and taking what they would. The Indians found it most comical that the Plymouth men spent time fixing one of the sorry houses, as though planning to stay. Like goodwives, the Plymouth men swept and cleaned, put shutters on the windows, and even built a strong new door.

  On the third evening, Myles Standish and Jack Hilyard were sitting together on a stump when the one named Witawawmut came into the village. He was tall and muscular and wore his hair in long plaits that fell to his shoulders. He wanted a man to gut fish, and there was one here who did this in exchange for corn.

  There was bad blood between Standish and Witawawmut from their first meeting in a Cummaquid village. Witawawmut had contemptuously called Standish a midget, and Standish had nearly killed him. Now the Indian went past as though Captain Shrimp—a name used only behind Standish’s back—were no more dangerous than the stump he sat upon.

  Witawawmut called several times and finally spied his man asleep under a tree. He cast a look at Standish, then pulled aside his breechclout and pissed into the man’s face.

  For all the bad temper in his red beard, Standish knew the way to bide his time. He whispered the word “tomorrow” to Jack Hilyard and smiled at Witawawmut.

  The next day, Standish invited Witawawmut, his partner Pecksuout, and their two retainers into the house for a parley. He stationed four men outside, while Stephen Hopkins, John Billington, and Jack Hilyard waited inside.

  The Indians seemed to fear nothing. These whites were unarmed, and how much more dangerous could they be—even Standish—than the craven beggars and scratchers who had been there for six months?

  Jack Hilyard sat at the table in the middle of the room, in a shaft of light that fell through one of the little windows. Beneath the table, he held Standish’s own snaphance. He did not like a bit of this. After the First Encounter, he had found the Indians to be honest and worthy in all their dealings. But only the strong survived. That much he was certain of. And he now had a new wife in Plymouth. To protect her and the babe in her belly, he would kill all the Indians to Narragansett Bay if he had to.

  As Witawawmut entered, Jack pulled back the hammer and felt the flint scrape against his thumbnail.

  Standish spoke a few words to the Indians. At the last of them—“We wish only to know how we may be friends”—the door was barred from the outside. Men at each window slammed and barred the new shutters, and the room fell into riot.

  Standish snatched Pecksuout’s own knife from around his neck and stabbed him in the heart. Jack Hilyard pulled the snaphance from under the table and killed Witawawmut with a deafening shot. One retainer threw himself at the door. Billington pulled him back and broke his neck with a single blow. The fourth surrendered, but it did him no good.

  They would make of him an example, if it would stop a war. They dragged him outside and hanged him.

  Then Standish asked Jack Hilyard, “The axe I did see in your belt, be it sharp?”

  “Like a razor.”

  “Then give the great Witawawmut a shave.”

  They broke up the Wessagusset colony. Any who were willing to meet Plymouth standards were allowed to return with them. The rest put aboard their small ship, the Swan, and went to join the English fleet fishing at Penobscot.

  The returning warriors went straight to the governor’s house, where Standish placed a bundle of bloody rags before William Bradford.

  “Is this what I think?” asked Bradford.

  Standish urged him to open it. Bradford hesitated, so Ezra Bigelow peeled away the rags to reveal, first, the greased black hair and feathers, then the painted forehead, the eyelids half closed, the mouth half open, the tongue lolling grotesquely at the corner, and the raw neck meat that looked like chicken guts and bone.

  “This be the one they called Witawawmut. A most arrogant pinse,” said Standish.

  “Very good,” said Bradford. “Now take it away.”

  “Mount it, Captain,” said Bigelow.

  Bradford shook his head. “A savage custom.”

  “The better to frighten the savages,” said Standish.

  “Aye,” added Bigelow.

  “We do not want fear.” Bradford folded the rags loosely around the head again. “We want peace.”

  “Fear ensures peace,” said Ezra Bigelow. “Fear and punishment for the Nausets.”

  “We are not strong enough to punish them,” said Bradford, “nor have we evidence ’gainst them.”

  “We have the word of Massasoit,” said Bigelow.

  Jack Hilyard did not wish to stay an extra moment. He wished to tell his new wife of his bravery, his new and most pregnant wife, most pregnant and most envied by those who still waited for women from England. But he had to speak. “I be the one what took this pinse’s head.”

  “Bravely done,” muttered Ezra, “after he was dead.”

  “I killed him first,” said Hilyard, “when thou was nowheres to be found.”

  “Speak your piece, Goodman Jack,” Bradford interceded.

  “The Nausets be allies. They saved me boy and dealt corn for Weston’s men, too.”

  “They saved thy boy to put us in their debt. They traded corn to get good English hoes,” grunted Ezra Bigelow.

  “They be savages,” added Standish. “Had we not give Massasoit a good shit, even he might have been down on us.”

  “We’ve not strength to fight them all,” said Bradford.

  Bigelow picked up the head and held it by the hair so that the jaw dropped open and long strands of fluid dripped from the neck. “Let this be our weapon. Mount it. Let ’em see what we do to our enemies. Let ’em see our anger and spread word. Let ’em think we come in all wrath, with musket and cannon, to punish the plotters. Let fear be our ally.”

  And Bradford agreed, for Bigelow spoke good sense. The head of Witawawmut was put upon a pike at the meetinghouse, so that the people of Plymouth could study it each Sunday on the way to service.

  Christopher Hilyard studied it each day. He watched a crow perch on the top of it and peck until he pulled the tongue completely out of the mouth. He watched swarming flies blow the flesh full of eggs. And when his father took guard duty atop the blockhouse, Christopher went with him and watched the maggots hatching in the eye sockets.

  Such contemplation was not good for a young boy, his father said, but in Christopher’s confusing world, Witawawmut’s head seemed the heart of confusion. Why had it been put up to frighten the Nausets, who had shown only friendship since the first fight? Why was this Indian not simply buried, and the memory of
his enmity buried with him? This world belonged to them, he thought, and they to it.

  To Christopher, this head bespoke his father’s hatred of those who had befriended him. His father’s new wife bespoke his own eclipse in his father’s eyes. Now Christopher longed to leave his father’s house and see once more the smiles of Amapoo and the Nausets.

  But among the Nausets, there were few smiles.

  Even in that enlightened time, trial by ordeal was used to determine guilt. A man accused was put to a test. If he survived, God was showing favor. If he did not, he was guilty.

  The Nauset sachem Aspinet had conspired with no one, but upon hearing of Witawawmut’s head and the white men’s wrath, he and many of his people were struck with fear and fled into the marshes. Within months, the misery of life there made them easy prey for the diseases that now came each winter. When word reached Plymouth that Aspinet was dead of pestilence, it was taken as a clear sign, not of misunderstanding between white and red, but of red guilt.

  Some Nausets, however, refused to flee. If the white men attacked, Autumnsquam would die rather than leave his home. Others believed that even if they fled, the white God would chase them into the marshes and strike them with sickness. But if this God was so powerful, Autumnsquam wondered, why had he not struck him first? After all, Autumnsquam deserved punishment. It had been he who promised that the Nausets would join Witawawmut’s war.

  It would have been bad work, killing the boy Chris-topher Hil-yud. But Autumnsquam would have done it. He would have done it for his own boy and for his people. Many Wampanoags, rising against the whites, falling on them at night, killing the forty or fifty men-at-arms, killing the women and children… He would have done it… for the future.

  Now he feared that the people of the Narrow Land would never rise up. Some villages were even sending gifts to Plymouth. They would accept the white man’s terms and the white man’s gods. First, they would accept the whites who were smart and dangerous, like those of Plymouth. Then they would accept the ones who were lazy and crude, like those of Wessagusset. And it sickened him. Had it not been for his boy, he would rather have left his head on a pike beside Witawawmut’s.

  v.

  “Be you certain we can handle this tub?”

  “A shallop’s the finest tool what was ever made for the sea, master. She’ll handle this blow like a three-poler.”

  “And only the Indians knows this coast better’n—”

  A mountainous wave rolled over the boat, filling her ankle-deep with water.

  A crude one, who was also smart and dangerous, was shaping a course for Plymouth. He had crossed the Atlantic on a fishing vessel, telling his mates he was a blacksmith. That was partly true, but he had not told them that his name was Thomas Weston.

  The Council for New England had grown more vexed with Weston than ever the Plymouth men had. He had sent ships to New England without permission. He had charged them to fish where they would, for the ocean was free. He had funded the renegade Wessagusset colony, for New England was too big to be controlled by a few men. And none of it was lawful in the eyes of Crown or council. So had he been prohibited from setting foot anywhere in New England.

  Weston had read the decree, taken a false name, and sailed for New England, council be damned. No man or royal authority could keep him from his investment. But when he reached the fishing fleet at Penobscot Bay, he learned that no man in his colony had done anything to protect his investments, and the Swan could not be found. His speculation had fallen to pieces.

  But he never dismissed an idea that might prove profitable, and he had brought with him a sealed iron box. In it was something to use when there was time for the wildest of speculations. It was the sea journal of the Mayflower, and the time had come.

  As blacksmiths were not well suited to the sea, he had found a pair of fishermen who would take him to Plymouth. However, but for the Saints, he had never judged men well. They were north of the Merrimac River when the seas rose and the shallop began to ride like a leaf in a rushing stream.

  “By’r Lady!” cried the one who said he knew what he was doing. “We be headin’ for the breakers.”

  “Hold her steady!” cried the one who had said he knew where they were going. “Or we’ll be in pieces.”

  “The wind’s got her!”

  “Then bring her about!” cried Weston.

  “Shut up,” cried one.

  “He’s right!” shouted the other.

  Through the sheets of rain Weston saw the breakers wearing on the bar a hundred yards from the beach. “Throw out an anchor!” he screamed.

  “Shut up!” cried one.

  “He’s right!” cried the other as a wave broke over them and carried his mate into the black boil of water.

  Now the shallop began to turn with the force of the waves. Weston grabbed his box and clutched it to his chest, “Bring ’er about!”

  “But the tiller’s gone!”

  “It’s the tillerman what’s gone.”

  “We be adrift! And bloody sinkin’! Bail!”

  “You brung no buckets, you damn fool.”

  “Use that.” The fisherman lunged for Weston’s box.

  “No!” Weston pushed the fisherman away.

  The sea rose and the fisherman followed his mate into the abyss. A moment later, it swallowed Weston as well….

  vi.

  They were Penobscots. They had come with pelts to trade at Strawberry Bank. Now they had new knives, beads of glass for their women, a copper kettle, and buckets of white men’s beer for the long walk north.

  Thomas Weston had his old knife, a purse containing ten pounds in gold, a rucksack of clothing rescued from the surf, and the iron box which, somehow, he had clung to when the sea sucked him in. If there was anything of luck in this, it was the season. Had it not been summer, he would have frozen to death. But after the storm and the miracle of his deliverance, he had dried himself in the sun, and now had many hours of daylight in which to travel.

  He had taken a path that snaked through marsh grass as tall as a man and as dense as thatch on a roof. He had not gone far when he heard laughter and men speaking in a strange tongue. His first thought was to hunker down in the rushes and let them go by.

  But there was no time. They were rounding the bend now. And their chatter was ceasing as, one by one, they saw the big, bedraggled white man blocking their way.

  Weston puffed himself up to his full five feet nine and squared himself on the path. If he understood one thing, it was the power of bluster. He clutched his iron box to his chest and resolved that he would not even step aside.

  The Penobscots were not warlike people. But like the Nausets, they were of two minds about white men, who brought some good things and many bad. The Penobscots who met Weston may have decided that in his box and rucksack he carried some of the good things. And for all the bad they had endured, perhaps he owed them.

  An Indian said hello.

  Weston set his jaw and nodded. He guessed the Indian had learned English while working with the fishing fleet.

  “Got pretty red feather in hat.”

  “Aye.” The feather had stayed in Weston’s hat, which had stayed on his head during his ride in the surf. It was not nearly as pretty as once it had been.

  The Indian took a gourd from his bucket of beer. He was as tall as the Englishman, but his chest and shoulders were scrawny. And none of his mates looked much better. Weston thought he might handle them all.

  The Penobscot smiled. His face was pitted from the pox, and his body was covered with foul-smelling grease. The Penobscot, however, was in no way bothered by the mosquitoes, which feasted on Weston’s neck and had been biting through his hose since he entered the marsh.

  The Penobscot offered the gourd. “Drink for feather?”

  Weston was tempted. A draft of beer for a feather. A true bargain. But in mongering, he never accepted the first offer. It showed weakness. So he shook his head.

  The Penobscot di
d not seem disappointed, as though he understood the game of barter. He ran his hand over the ridge of hair on his shaved head. “What bird?”

  Weston did not understand.

  The Penobscot drank down the beer, then said, “Me want feather from red bird. What bird? Cardinal bird?”

  “No bird. Dye. Red dye.” He realized immediately that he had blundered.

  The Penobscot looked at his friends and said something that caused them all to grumble. Then he pulled his knife and swung it toward Weston’s neck, screaming, “Red no die. White die. Then take feather.”

  One of the Indians grabbed Weston’s left arm. He tried to swing loose, but another grabbed his right, causing the iron box to fall to the ground. One of the others grabbed it, while the leader slid the knife from Weston’s belt and pressed it against his chest.

  “Give me my box.”

  “No talk or thee die.”

  The Indian took Weston’s knife and sliced through the wax seal on the box. He pulled it open, his face filled with anticipation, until he saw… a book. He turned the box upside down and let the book drop to the ground. Then he looked inside for secret compartments; then he threw the box into the rushes with a curse.

  He took Weston’s rucksack and rifled through that. Then he grabbed Weston’s change purse from his belt.

  That Weston could not countenance. With all his might, he swung his body so that the Indian on his left slammed into the one before him. Then he bit the nose of the one who held him by the right arm. Then…

  He woke in the bright, broiling sunshine… or something woke him. Was it the vicious pain at the back of his head or the curious feeling in his crotch? He rolled over, and the rushes scraped against his back, which was burned like meat. Then something bit him, bit him right at the tip of his manhood. He screamed and leaped to his feet. Sharp claws sank into his foreskin and he screamed again. But there was no one to hear. He did not know where he was or what had happened. He knew only the pain.