The Dumb Shall Sing

by Stephen Lewis

  He followed Wequashcook down the center aisle and joined the moving queue passing in front of the English wise man. Wequashcook bowed when he stood before the minister.

  “A most instructive sermon,” he said.

  “Thank you,” Minister Davis replied, and Wequashcook bowed again before exiting. “And what did you think of your first Sabbath day service, Matthew?” The minister’s voice strove for genuine concern, and he offered a full smile of his yellowed teeth.

  “I found it wondrous strange,” Massaquoit said.

  “And are their points you need explained? I would happy to offer to do so at a time meet for both of us.”

  “You are too kind, Sir,” Massaquoit replied.

  “Not at all.”

  “I will take your words home with me where I will study them over in my memory.”

  “I am sure Mistress Williams will also be very willing to explain things to you.”

  “Then, she too, is too kind,” Massaquoit said, and walked out of the meetinghouse.

  * * * *

  He found Wequashcook standing by himself outside of the meetinghouse, as the English drifted by in family units exchanging greetings to each other as they strolled toward their homes. Catherine and Woolsey stood to one side, far enough way to be out of earshot. Massaquoit concluded that he was supposed to have a private conversation with Wequashcook, Indian to Indian. He decided that he would humor the English. He walked to Wequashcook and put his head closed enough so that he could smell the other man’s breath. It reeked.

  “That is a nice hat you have on,” he said in a whisper. He glanced at Catherine and Woolsey. The magistrate smiled at him so as to offer encouragement. But the English woman was not so easily fooled. Her eyes were hard as she stared at him, and he knew that he would have to explain himself to her before very long.

  “It is nothing special,” Wequashcook replied, also in a low voice.

  “It is a hat warm enough for the coldest snows of winter,” Massaquoit said. He looked up at the sun now overhead and beating down on them. He wiped a drop of perspiration from his forehead.

  “You know very well why I wear it even now.”

  “Yes,” Massaquoit said, “I do. “And I hope you remember that I know why.”

  “Do you think I would forget the man who took half my scalp off?”

  “The important thing,” Massaquoit replied, “is that it was only half, and that you are here to complain about having to hide your humiliation under a ridiculous hat in the middle of the summer.” He nodded and smiled at Woolsey. The magistrate grinned back at him. Catherine shook her head slowly from side to side. Wequashcook put his hand on Massaquoit’s shoulders, as though offering a benediction, and he too smiled at Woolsey.

  “I remember that you did not kill me when you had the chance.” Wequashcook frowned, so that the wrinkles on his aged face met to form double and triple lines of tightened flesh.

  “We are in the English world now. My debt to you for leaving me my life must be settled in our world. And you will not live to see me there unless you do a better job of living in this one.”

  “We may be in the English world, but we have not changed into English.”

  Wequashcook smiled, and he lifted his beaver hat just enough to reveal the patch of raw scar tissue on the top of his head.

  “I hear,” he said, “that there is now a business in scalps. The English will pay, and the French, and maybe even the Dutch. They will all be in the market for Indian scalps.” He put his hat back down and placed his palm on Massaquoit’s scalp. “And you know, they can’t tell the difference between a Pequot, or a Wampanoag, or a Massachusetts, so how will they know whose hair they are buying?”

  Massaquoit seized Wequashcook’s wrist, and held it against his own head.

  “And how many beads of wampum do you think somebody will pay for mine?”

  Wequashcook freed his wrist with a sudden, strong gesture that demonstrated he retained some of the strength that had made him a formidable warrior in his youth. He uttered a quick laugh.

  “You. Somebody will feed you to the dogs. Maybe they will want your hair.”

  Catherine and Woolsey strolled over to the two Indians before Massaquoit had a chance to reply. Wequashcook set his face in an obsequious expression as he addressed the magistrate directly, ignoring Catherine.

  “I was just saying to Matthew that he will learn, as I did, how much greater the English God is than our puny spirits.”

  “Spirits, pshaw!” Woolsey exclaimed. “Devils and incubi you mean, looking for a teat to suck.”

  “Yes. I was about to tell him that as well,” Wequashcook said.

  Woolsey put his hand on Massaquoit’s shoulder.

  “I trust you will prove to be a good student, for I cannot think of a better tutor than one of your own kind, such as William here, who has already profited in great measure from accepting Our Lord.”

  Massaquoit wanted to slap the magistrate’s hand away, and he pressed his lips together to prevent the escape of the words he wished to say. Instead, he simply nodded. He was beginning to understand that the less he said to the English the better off he was. After all, except for the woman, they didn’t expect him to have anything to say anyway.

  “I am sure William will teach me well,” he said.

  “Good, good,” Woolsey said. He smiled broadly at Catherine.

  “Things are going just as we had planned,” he said.

  Phyllis joined Catherine and offered a quick, half bow in the direction of the magistrate.

  “Come then,” Catherine said. “We can talk about how well things go, on the way home.”

  * * * *

  “Tell me what you are talking about with William.”

  They were two-thirds the way home, and had left the other villagers behind them.

  Massaquoit shrugged.

  “Wequashcook was telling me about your English god. He was advising me to learn to accept him, as he had done.”

  Catherine felt her temper rise at his stubborn insistence on using the forbidden names, but she had a more important concern.

  “And what else?”

  “We also talked about his hat.”

  “His hat.”

  “It is a marvelous hat.”

  “That is what I told him. You know, we Indians like to compliment such things.”

  “And we English are not such fools as you make us out to be,” she replied.

  “It was a lovely hat,” Phyllis said. “But I cannot understand why he wears it in the summer.”

  Catherine eyed her servant. Sometimes she marveled at her innocence, seeing in her a type of Eve before the fall, totally without guile in herself and unable to see it in others. At other times, she simply wondered how she managed to get by from day to day in a world so much more complicated than her own simple nature. She shifted her gaze to Massaquoit, and she could see by set of his chin that he would offer no more information today.

  Waiting on the path to her house, eyes staring anxiously in the direction Catherine would be coming from the meetinghouse was Sarah Plover. Catherine hastened her steps. She recalled looking in vain for Mercy Plover in her usual place on a bench three rows behind her own, but neither she nor any other member of her family had been there.

  “Is it time then?” she asked.

  The girl nodded.

  “Mother did not feel well this morning, and then the pains started. Father sent me to fetch you.”

  “You go back home, then,” Catherine said. “I will be right behind you.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Mercy Plover was a strong woman whose previous three births had presented no particular problem. Catherine, therefore, did not anticipate any difficulty with this delivery although her years of practice had taught her that one pregnancy was often not a very useful predictor of the next one. Childbirth was part the Lord’s mystery and part a natural bodily function. She could only accept God’s will, but that also meant that she must exerc
ise her God given skill.

  “Go into the house,” she said to Phyllis, “and gather up the birthing stool, and see if we have any fresh butter, and if we do, bring a goodly slab. I will be in the garden.”

  “I do know what you need,” Phyllis said.

  “Then get it,” Catherine replied.

  She walked quickly through the garden to its furthest edge where she found the red raspberry bush, burdened now with clusters of small white flowers in anticipation of the fruit soon to emerge. She knelt down in front of the bush and examined the heart shaped leaves, which grew in groups of three off the main stem of the plant. She turned the leaves over, studying the green top and the whitish, fuzzy underside for pests. She decided on a dozen pest free leaves, snapped them off, and put them in her pocket.

  “You’ll be making some tea, then,” Phyllis said as Catherine found her standing in front of the garden.

  “That I will, if you will be so kind as to boil some water as soon as we arrive. Mercy will want a drink of this to ease her pains.”

  Phyllis held out a greasy napkin. Catherine opened it and put her nose down to smell the butter.

  “It will do,” she said. “It is not for the table.”

  Phyllis lifted the stool and tucked it under her arm. She held out her hand, and Catherine handed her the napkin.

  Without waiting for Phyllis, Catherine strode onto the road leading to the Plover house at a pace that belied her plump body and short legs. Phyllis staggered after her, as the weight of the stool in one hand, and the napkin now beginning to ooze butter in the hot sun in the other, made walking at any decent speed difficult.

  “Come along now,” Catherine called back over her shoulder. “The Lord has decided that Mercy shall deliver today, and His call to her is also His call to us to do what we can to ease her travail.”

  Phyllis caught up with Catherine, her chest heaving from the effort. Catherine seemed not to notice.

  “Do you think Mercy will have a beer for us,” Phyllis managed to say between pants.

  “Surely, for herself and for the neighbor women,” Catherine replied. “And as we have a drink with those good wives, I will want to talk with them about Goody Jameson.”

  * * * *

  Goodman Plover was standing outside his house with his arm around Sarah. The girl’s eyes were wide with excitement. Catherine nodded at father and daughter and walked into the house, through the front room that served as kitchen and common area to the room in the back where she found Mercy sitting on the edge of her bed, her face contorted in pain. Catherine turned to Phyllis who followed behind. She pointed at a spot on the floor beside the bed, and Phyllis deposited the birthing stool there with a loud sigh.

  “Go and send the child for the other good wives,” she said. “But first see to the water for the tea.” She put one hand on Mercy’s cheek, and the other on her belly. She waited until she felt the hard muscle of the uterus contract beneath her palm, and then she stroked Mercy’s face from forehead to chin with the other. Mercy bit down hard on her lip and held her teeth there until the pain stopped. When she relaxed her mouth, a drop of blood formed on her lower lips where her front teeth had broken the skin. She ran her tongue over the blood to clean her lip, and then she swallowed.

  “I think I’d rather have some groaning beer,” Mercy said. “There’s some on the table in the kitchen.”

  “I’ll get you some, soon enough,” Catherine replied. “But I will also brew you some tea with raspberry leaves, and that will ease your pain considerably more than the beer.”

  “Ah, but I don’t think it will taste so fine,” Mercy said.

  Catherine smiled, but her eyes remained fixed on Mercy’s face, waiting for the change of expression she knew would come before long.

  “I’ve got the terrible toothache,” she said.

  Mercy nodded.

  “Do you not have a remedy then for yourself?”

  “I can make a poultice of hops.”

  “You could drink the hops as well,” Mercy said.

  “That I can.”

  They sat in silence for a few moments, awaiting the next pain. When it came, Mercy stiffened and threw her head back. Catherine leaned over to cradle her until the contraction subsided. Phyllis came in with an earthenware mug, steaming with raspberry tea. Catherine beckoned for her to wait. The contraction stopped and Mercy relaxed. Sweat beaded her forehead. Phyllis handed the mug to Catherine who pressed it to Mercy’s lips. She took a deep swallow.

  “It’s not the beer,” she said.

  “You are past wanting that. This will give you greater ease.”

  Mercy took another swallow, and then she lay back on the bed. She began to breathe more slowly and easily. Catherine stroked her forehead, and Mercy closed her eyes. When the next contraction came, she tensed for only a moment before relaxing again.

  “That’s the way,” murmured, Catherine. “The tea is doing its work, and you can get some rest for the ending when it comes.”

  Mercy nodded, and her breathing turned to a raspy snore. Catherine waited until she was sure that she was dozing, and then she stood up and stretched. Her body had tensed with each of Mercy’s contractions. She had sometimes joked about this phenomenon that her body was as ancient as though it had given birth a hundred times, for all of the labors it had experienced, spasming in sympathetic pains with those of the birthing mothers. She stretched and walked into the kitchen. There she found Phyllis, sitting at one side of the plank table, pouring beer into mugs for Goody Samuels and Goody Richards, who sat on the other side.

  Lucinda Samuels was about forty-five, short, plump, and with a large mole on her chin. She lived in the next house. Addy Richards, who had had her first child only two months before, was in her early twenties, tall and slender with a very pretty, triangular face that narrowed to a delicate chin. She lived across the way, a little closer to the Jamesons than the Plovers. Catherine sat down next to Phyllis.

  “Are there no more mugs, then?” she asked.

  For answer, Phyllis shoved hers toward her.

  Catherine lifted the mug to her lips and let the beer flow into her mouth where she held it before swallowing, tilting her head so that the liquid sat for a while on the troublesome tooth that throbbed in her lower jaw on the left side. She swallowed the beer and ran her finger over her jaw, which felt swollen.

  “Have you got the toothache, then?” Lucinda asked.

  “A wicked one,” Catherine said.

  “I try to tell her that she should be aware of Goody Hawkins,” Phyllis said. “Her tooth rages whenever that woman is about.”

  “Then where is she now, I’d like to know,” Catherine replied.

  “Hereabouts,” Phyllis said.

  “Pshaw. Finish your beer and go sit with Mercy.”

  Phyllis drained her mug and stood up.

  “Hereabouts,” she repeated.

  “There may be something in what that girl says,” Lucinda said. “Why, just the other day, I woke up feeling unwell, and when I went out of doors, there she was. She mumbled something in my direction that I could not hear, and I swear I did feel so faint I had to go back to bed.”

  “And wasn’t that where you wanted to be anyway?” Catherine said.

  “To be sure,” Lucinda replied, “as my husband John was out looking for our hog that had strayed away, and there was nobody else in the house to disturb my rest. She offered a cackling laugh that caused a blush to work its way up Addy’s face from the tip of her chin to her high cheekbones and then past her forehead until it disappeared under her cap.

  “Goody Hawkins was about the night the Jameson babe died,” Catherine said.

  “I did not see her,” Addy said.

  “Aye, but I did,” Lucinda said. “Didn’t she pull at you as you walked by.”

  “Maybe she did,” Catherine replied.

  Lucinda nodded her head.

  “Trouble does follow her.” She leaned closer so that Catherine could smell the beer on h
er breath. “But I don’t think she had anything to do with that babe dying like it did.”

  Catherine forced her eyebrows up in surprise.

  “What do you mean?”

  Lucinda leaned even closer so that she was in danger of falling into Catherine’s lap. Catherine steadied her with her hands on her shoulders.

  “And it wasn’t that Irish girl, I’ll warrant, whatever Henry Jameson said though that girl was a problem in that household.”

  “My William worked sometimes helping Henry,” Addy said.

  “And?” Lucinda demanded.

  “William says that Henry worried he had made a mistake in hiring that girl.”

  Lucinda brought her hand down hard enough to shake the table. Her mug tottered on the edge of the table. Catherine reached across her and righted the mug before it fell.

  “That is the very thing I was going to say. That girl with her cross and her prayers mumbled in some strange tongue.”

  “It wasn’t that at all,” Addy said. “It was the money he put out for her when he didn’t have it to spend, and with business so slow, he was in a terrible way.”

  “If you ask me,” Lucinda said after another deep swallow of her beer, “that lad Ned was part of the girl’s problem. I was walking by one day when I happened to look in through the window, and what I saw I should not have seen.” She slid her mug toward Catherine. “Have a sip.” Catherine shook her head. “As you like,” Lucinda said, and downed what was left in her mug. “There is something else about Martha Jameson I must tell you.” She stared into her mug, as if just realizing it was empty. She filled it from the pitcher.

  “You were about to say something Martha Jameson,” Catherine reminded her.

  “That I was. What I want you to know, as you were the midwife at the birth, and suspicion might alight on your head before long, if it has not already done so, is that I was speaking to Martha Jameson just last month when we were out together gathering strawberries in her garden. I was helping her you know because of her belly she was having trouble bending down to see the red, ripe ones.”