The Dumb Shall Sing

by Stephen Lewis

  "If you do not want to eat my food, I will not bother leaving it out to feed the birds," she said. "They eat well enough in my garden."

  "I was not hungry," he said.

  She looked at the way his ribs pressed against his flesh and shook her head.

  "Were you cold, then? If you want to sleep outside, I can give you a blanket."

  "The air is still warm," he replied. "But it will not continue so, and I need to build a shelter for myself."

  "So you think you might stay?" she asked.

  "If I left you would send the soldiers after me, would you not?"

  She shook her head.

  "It wouldn't matter what I did, they would go after you like a pack of wolves hungry for fresh meat."

  "Would you try to stop them, again, as you did on the ship?"

  She considered for a moment, and then shook her head.

  "I do not think so."

  "Good," he said. "I will stay. I will cause you no trouble." He took a breath. "I will try to do what tasks you give me."

  "Your labor will be light, but as you stay with us, you must contribute your strength. It is the one thing, as I am sure you have noticed, that we lack."

  Massaquoit remembered how he had contemplated making his way into the house, encountering no more resistance than water to a rock, and he nodded.

  "I need a knife, or hatchet, if you are bold enough to give me one."

  "Follow me," she said, and then she turned on her heel and followed a path that led around to the garden at the back of her house. The old man was stooped among the beans, a basket on the ground next to his feet.

  "Edward," Catherine called to him. The old man looked up. "Be so kind as to bring us a knife and a hatchet."

  The old man did not move.

  "Edward," Catherine said, in a louder voice. "Do not pretend that you have not heard me. And I know perfectly well what I am doing."

  Edward slowly stood up to stretch the stiffness out of his limbs, and then he shuffled off toward the house. He went in a door, and when he emerged a couple of minutes later, the sun glinted off the blades of the knife and the hatchet. He walked toward Catherine and Massaquoit until he was a half a dozen paces from them, and then he laid the implements down. Without a word, he returned to his basket and his beans.

  Massaquoit glanced at Catherine. She nodded, and he walked over to the tools and picked them up. He ran his thumb over their blades. Both were sharp enough to slice his flesh with just a little pressure.

  "I will be back before dark," he said.

  "Tonight is lecture night," she said. "I may not be home when you return." She searched his eyes to see if he understood, but his expression remained blank. "We go for instruction in God's words."

  "Your English God must be very hard to understand."

  "Some think so," Catherine replied.

  "Your minister, on board the boat, offered thanks to your God for defeating us."

  "He did."

  "Do you then blame him when you lose?"

  She knew how she would like to answer that question, that she would not invoke the Prince of Peace to make war, but she did not think the time right to offer such a radical thought to this heathen.

  Massaquoit waited a moment for further explanation, but when it became clear that this strange white woman was not going to offer any more, he trotted off into the woods behind the maple tree beneath which he had spent the night.

  He wanted to make his way to the shore to gather reeds for a sleeping mat. He knew that the water lay to the south on the other side of the English village. He had no intention of testing the attitudes of the other white people he might encounter, so he circled the village, staying in the woods.

  Once he was half way around the cluster of English houses, he spied a stand of young birch and it did not take him long to hack down enough saplings for his purpose. These he stacked, and then he searched for older, larger trees whose roots would run along the surface of the ground. Not far from the birch, he located two tall pines. He scraped away the dirt from one until he could feel a long taproot, and then he tracked it as it moved away from the tree. Five or six feet from the trunk the root had thinned sufficiently, and he hacked it off with the hatchet. He did this again with one more root from the first tree, and then cut two strips from the other tree, until he had eight or ten feet of rope like roots to bind the saplings into a frame. He used one long piece of root to tie together the stack of saplings, along with the other, shorter roots. A short distance away a mature beech tree, felled by a recent storm, lay on the ground. With the hatchet he skinned as much bark as he could carry.

  He was anxious to move on, in part to complete the gathering of his materials, and in part because he felt that the English soldiers might come upon him at any moment. He was not sure that he could trust the woman to keep them from following him. But he also could not much longer ignore the ache in his stomach. Not far from where he sat, he saw the dark blue berries on vines growing in the sun between the trees. The berries were bitter, but he knew they were safe.

  If he ate too much, he would become sick, so he stopped as soon as the ache in his stomach lessened. He felt some strength returning, and for a moment his eyes turned to the shadows in the darkening woods, and he thought he might go in that direction. But then he turned his back on the woods and headed for the shore. The sun had long since passed its zenith and was sliding down toward the west. He did not have much time.

  When he reached the southern edge of the village again, he saw a crowd gathering on the main road. The English, men, women, and children, were coming out of their houses to join the crowd as it marched past them. As the crowd swelled so did the angry noises emanating from it. The men were gesticulating to each other. Some carried what seemed to be clubs. Others lit torches against the deepening darkness. He came as close to the edge of the crowd as he dared while still keeping the last trees of the forest between him and the English. He strained his ears to hear their words. He could not be sure, but he thought he heard his name muttered.

  Their eyes, though, remained staring ahead. Nobody looked into the woods where he hid. He noted the direction of their movement toward the white woman's house. He did not know why the women and children were walking along with the men, but he was sure that they were all coming to find him. He considered running back into the safety of the woods where they would not follow in the dark, but then he would not be sure of their intentions. Instead, he stayed among the trees at the edge of the forest and followed the crowd as it approached Catherine’s house.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Catherine had just come out into the garden with Phyllis to see what vegetables might be gathered for supper when she heard a confused cacophony of voices rise from the road that skirted the hill on which her house sat. She and Phyllis hurried around to the front, and there she saw a crowd heading toward the northern edge of Newbury where the town ran abruptly into the untamed woods. The voices seemed to carry an angry tone. She turned to Phyllis.

  "Catch up with them, if you can, and see where they are going, and to what purpose."

  She watched as the girl hurried down the hill and trotted toward the people whose voices were becoming less distinct as they moved further away. Catherine strained her eyes, keeping them focused on the white cap Phyllis wore, and she saw it bobbing up and down behind the crowd. The cap stopped moving next to a man's dark brown hat. After a few moments, she could see the cap turn back toward her, while the hat moved away, and shortly Phyllis stood before her, catching her breath.

  "They are going to the Jameson house. They say the babe is dead. And they want you to come to say whether it was alive when it was born."

  She recalled holding the babe in her arms and seeing that he was having trouble breathing. She had seen that his nose was clogged with mucus and fluids, and she had cleared it with a bit of rag she carried in her midwife's basket for that purpose. The babe had snorted in the air as soon as she removed the cloth and then he had be
llowed a very strong and healthy cry. The only thing out of the ordinary from the birth that she could now remember was how the Jameson's Irish maidservant eyed the babe as though she wanted to do something with it. Catherine had seen dozens of births, and usually she could tell when a babe was in trouble. This one had given no indication of frailty.

  "Come along with me, then," she said to Phyllis. "Just stop to tell Edward to watch for Matthew."

  Phyllis did not respond, and Catherine motioned to the tree under which Massaquoit had slept.

  "You know," Catherine repeated, "Matthew."

  "I see, yes, he should wait for Matthew," Phyllis said.

  "Edward need not think about going to lecture."

  "He does not think about that anyway," Phyllis replied.

  "Be that as it may, I do not think there will be lecture tonight," Catherine said. "Now go along with you."

  The Jameson house was a humble structure of two sections, the older little more than a hut with walls of daub and wattle construction, a plaster of mud and manure layered over a substructure of crisscrossing poles. Henry Jameson had recently built a wing onto the back of the house to accommodate his growing family, and this new room was covered in wooden shingles outside and was generally more luxurious inside, having a wood plank floor and whitewashed plaster walls.

  It was in this room that Martha had delivered her babe. Catherine remembered that the Irish servant girl had a little space, not much more than a closet, for a bed so that she could be near the infant's cradle, and that the parents' bedroom was in the original portion of the house. She also remembered how the girl had fashioned a crude cross out of two twigs, tied together with thread, and then hung it over her bed until Henry had found it there and pulled it off. He had taken the cross outside and ground it into the mud with the heavy heel of his shoe. There was a separate entrance to this side of the house, which gave onto a patch of wild strawberries, and it was before that door that the crowd had gathered.

  As Catherine shouldered her way through the crowd, she felt hands grabbing at her sleeve. She was spun around, and for a moment she lost sight of Phyllis. Someone said, “I’ve got her,” but Catherine pulled away. Phyllis emerged from behind the man who was holding Catherine’s arm. A woman placed her face right in front of Catherine. She was missing her front teeth, and her breath was sour. She held a smoldering torch in one hand, and she brought it down near Catherine’s face.

  “Here, Mistress,” the woman said, “we’ve been waiting for you, we have.”

  Phyllis forced herself next to Catherine, shielding her from the woman.

  "Go," Catherine said to Phyllis, "to Master Woolsey, and tell him to come here right away."

  Phyllis pushed her way back through the crowd, which was advancing with a deliberate inevitability toward the house. Catherine moved with the energy of the crowd, but at a faster pace, so that soon she reached its leading edge, some ten or so feet away from Henry and Ned Jameson, who stood with their backs to their house. Ned had his arm around the Irish servant girl, flattening her breasts and squeezing her hard against his side. She held a pitcher in her hand. It was tilted toward the ground and water dripped from it. The girl’s eyes were wide and starting as they found Catherine.

  “Please,” she said, but then Ned pulled her even harder toward him, and whatever else the girl was trying to say was lost in the breath exploding from her mouth.

  The Jameson girls, ranging from a toddler to the oldest, a twelve year old, were gathered around their mother, who stood off to one side. Martha's gown was unlaced and one heavy breast hung free as though she were about to give her babe suck. Her eyes moved back and forth between her husband and the crowd, seemingly unable or unwilling to focus. The toddler amused itself by walking round and round through her mother's legs. The oldest girl seemed to be whispering comfort to her younger siblings. Then the girl turned to her mother and laced up her gown. Martha looked at her daughter's hand as though it were a fly buzzing about her, but she did not swipe it away.

  Henry was holding the babe, wrapped in swaddling, and unmoving. It was clearly quite dead. He took a step toward Catherine and held out the babe towards her. His face glowed red in the glare of a torch.

  "Here she is,” he shouted. “She needs must say.” He lowered his voice a little. “Tell us, then if you please Mistress Williams, was this babe born alive?"

  "Who says nay?" Catherine asked. She looked at Martha who stood mute, and then at the Irish servant girl, who did not seem to understand what was happening. Always the finger of blame, she thought, lands on some poor woman while the men stand around pointing that finger with self-righteous and hypocritical arrogance. She recalled how Henry had asked first what sex the babe was before he inquired as to his wife’s health. “Henry will be glad,” Martha had said, as Catherine had held the babe in front of her so that she could see its genitalia. And then Martha had collapsed onto the bed, a woman exhausted by fifteen years of being pregnant, giving birth, suffering miscarriages, and nursing the babes that were born, and always there had been the poverty. She had not wanted to take Ned in, for there was never enough food.

  "Just answer the question," Henry insisted. "We have heard how soft your heart is for a savage. How is it with this babe? Here look at it, which is not breathing now who was when it was born. Was it not very much alive when you pulled it out of my wife's belly not three days ago?"

  A voice came from the back of the crowd, male, strong, and insistent.

  "An answer, Mistress, we need to know the truth."

  Catherine turned toward the voice, but she could not identify the speaker. It came from the side near Ned where a knot of people were gathered in the shadow of a tall tree. Catherine thought she saw a pock marked cheek of the sailor who had helped row them ashore. As if to confirm her suspicion, Ned nodded at the man.

  "The truth," pock face said, and then he was joined by others, male and female, rising from the group beneath the tree, and then spreading across the surface of the crowd like white caps in a storm riding waves toward the shore. "The truth," they clamored, "tell us the truth."

  "What says the mother, then?" Catherine demanded. "What says Goody Jameson?"

  "Nothing," came the response from the group.

  Catherine turned back to Henry.

  "Your wife, Henry, what does she say?"

  "Nothing," Henry repeated. "She no longer speaks. She came to me not an hour ago, holding the babe in her arms and handed it to me, and she does not speak."

  Catherine studied Martha's face. Its expression did not change, as her children moved about her. She did not seem to see that her husband was holding her dead infant in his arms, and she did not hear the insistent cries for the truth. It was as though she were standing in a meadow daydreaming while butterflies circled her head. Every moment or two she extended her hand toward the toddler that clung to her knees, but it was a gesture both vague and inconsequential, and her hand never found her child's head.

  Catherine stepped close to Martha, close enough to feel the woman's breath on her face.

  "Martha, you must speak," Catherine said, and Martha's eyes now focused on her, as though she had just returned from that distant meadow. She shook her head, slowly at first, and then with increasing agitation. Catherine took Martha's shoulders in both hands and squeezed and then the nodding motion stopped. Still Martha did not speak.

  "My poor wife is distracted by the death of our babe," Henry declared. "Can you not see that? Mistress Williams, you must answer for her."

  "Well, then," Catherine said, "if Martha Jameson will not attest to the truth, I needs must say that this babe was born alive, and alive it was when I left it. Truth you want, and there it is."

  A murmur arose from the crowd. It pushed toward Catherine.

  "It is surely dead now," somebody said.

  "If Goody Jameson won't speak, we have ways," said another.

  "Yes, press her, stone by stone. She will talk, then, I warrant."

  "
You will leave her alone," Henry said, and the crowd, which had come within several feet of the clustered Jameson family, stopped. Henry held out the babe toward his wife.

  “Tell them, Martha,” he said. He thrust the babe toward her, but she did not hold out her arms to take it. He shook his head. “She brought the babe to me. It was dead. She said she had been asleep, and when she woke she saw the servant girl leaning over the babe. When she picked it up, it was not breathing. Then she brought it to me. That girl, she did something while my wife was asleep.”

  Catherine felt the anger rise in the crowd toward the servant. She remembered once, how when she was a girl in Alford, a crowd just like this one had fallen upon a little boy whose family was Catholic, and how they had beaten him with sticks until he lay senseless in the road. She strode to Ned and grabbed his arm.

  “Let her go,” she said.

  “You are now interfering in my household, Mistress. Leave be.”

  “Step away, Mistress,” a woman in the crowd said. “You have told us what we needed to know.”

  "She,” Henry shouted, “standing there with the pitcher, ask her what she was doing with our babe."

  The servant girl turned her terrified and starting eyes toward her master. Their whites loomed preternaturally large in the failing light of the early evening.

  "A priest, it was, I was after," she said.

  Ned pushed the girl forward, so she stood quivering in front of the crowd.

  "That is it," he said, "that is how we found her, practicing her papist ritual on our babe, pouring water on its innocent face, and mumbling some words, a curse they must have been."

  "Its poor soul," the girl muttered. "There was no priest. I asked for one. So I tried myself to save its precious soul."

  Henry looked at his wife, whose eyes were now studying the ground at her feet. Then he stared hard at the girl, his face brightening as with a new understanding.

  "You drowned it, for certain," he said. "Or you cast a spell on it so it could not breathe. What, a papist priest? In Newbury? You have killed our babe and driven my poor wife mad.”