“Well, Catherine,” the governor said, “you do surprise me, that you would so upset the community when the matter was under the watchful eye of the law.”
“Do you refer to that poor girl in prison?”
“I do, of course, but more of the process which put her there.”
“And which will release her as a consequence of Henry’s confession?”
“That is what we are here to discuss,” Peters said. “It is not so certain to my mind that releasing the girl after hearing the ravings of a man whose faculties were unsettled by the crowd and the strange occurrence of the moon, and not least, your dramaturgy. I did not know you had acted on the stage.”
“She has certainly not,” Woolsey interjected, “and I think we should talk about our common interest in seeing that justice is served.”
“Justice and the well-being of the community, to be sure,” the governor replied with a smile so cold it frosted his lips. He nodded at Woolsey. “Is that not so, Joseph?”
“The interest of the community and justice for the girl,” Woolsey said, “are they not the same?”
Peters straightened up and the smile disappeared from his face, replaced by an expression of studied seriousness. “Of course, they should be. But before we act, I think we must have an opportunity to talk to Henry Jameson, and perhaps Martha as well, if she can be encouraged to speak words we understand. I would not want to act in haste, nor would I want to be bullied by the emotions of a mob.”
“Are you not going to arrest the man?” Catherine demanded. “He has confessed.”
“I have sent the constable to watch over his house, but I intend to let him sleep in his own bed tonight. Tomorrow, we shall have him taken to the meetinghouse and we will interrogate him.
“And the girl?”
“She must be asleep already. I do not think the jailer spends overmuch on candles. If Henry Jameson repeats his story to us, in the calm of a magisterial inquiry, she can be let free soon enough. And then put her on the first boat back to Ireland where she can have her bastard child.”
Minister Davis had been sitting stonily in his chair, as though everything about this proceeding irritated him. He now stood up and adjusted his skull cap.
“‘Justice and judgment are the habitation of the Lord’s throne.’ Let us remember that tomorrow. Justice and judgment. Both are the Lord’s.”
“Of course,” Peters said. “We labor only to do His will.”
Catherine looked from one to the other, and then to Woolsey.
“Joseph, if you will be so kind to walk with me?”
They walked away from the stately house. Catherine looked back at the windows of the governor’s front room, still yellowed by the candlelight, and she imagined the governor and the minister, heads together, discussing how God’s justice and judgment applied to Margaret Mary Donovan.
* * * *
The moon, risen again from its sleep, had reasserted itself, bold, round, and golden in the night sky. Its light illuminated the shore where Massaquoit squatted behind the huge boulder on which Margaret had perched the night of their escape. It was twenty feet onto the sand that began where the forest gave way to the beach, and it was in a direct line with the road the English had built through the woods from the town center to the harbor.
He had been resting long enough for the night breeze to have carried away the perspiration that had coated his body after he had run along an older and narrower trail that paralleled the road. He had exerted himself so that he would arrive well ahead of Ned. He wanted to be calm, and breathing easily when he put his hands on the boy, his cool purpose setting off in clear relief the boy’s terror.
As he squatted beneath the bright moon, listening to the surf driven by the breeze slap against the shore, waiting for the sounds of Ned’s hurrying footsteps to break the even rhythms of the water, he suddenly realized that he had heaped upon Ned his pent up anger at the English, all of them. He told himself that the boy deserved his hatred, but he could not deny to himself that Ned had become for him the reification of the evil spirit that had blown across the ocean with the winds that drove the English ships to these shores, bringing a decimation from disease and war from which his people would never recover, and in this sad story the boy was no more than a twig on the great and oppressive English tree whose branches cast such a devastating shadow over his land. Perversely, the more he thought of the general ruin caused by the English, the harder it was for him to sustain the heat of his anger toward the particular English boy. As he waited, he stoked the fire of his hatred, and yet he felt that his passion might soon consume itself and let drift its ash onto a heap of exhausted despair. He did not know what he would do when Ned fell into his hands.
He did not have to wait long to find out. Just as he stood to stretch his legs, he heard branches snapping as something hurtled heedlessly through them, and beneath the sharp sound of the breaking wood was the uneven, stumbling thud of an exhausted runner who continued to drive his legs forward by force of will that coerced yet one more stride, and then another, from fatigued muscles.
Massaquoit stepped from behind the boulder just as Ned staggered down to one knee on the sand where the road met the beach. Ned’s sides heaved and his eyes closed. Sweat soaked his shirt and his breeches, causing the sand to adhere to him as he lay down and rolled onto his back, his eyes still closed and his mouth opened wide to gasp for breath. He opened his eyes just in time to see Massaquoit’s foot come down on his chest. He grabbed Massaquoit’s ankle and tried to wiggle free. Massaquoit just stepped down harder. Ned’s face flushed as he tried to breathe against the increasing pressure. Massaquoit dug his heel into Ned’s sternum, and the boy’s mouth opened and his eyes bulged. He tried even harder to pry Massaquoit’s foot off of him, but the effort only rendered him more breathless.
“Please,” he managed to wheeze.
“Where is your bucket of dung, now?” Massaquoit asked. He eased the pressure just a little. He wanted to hear what Ned might say.
“What?” the boy asked.
“You know. What you were throwing at my mother the other day.”
The blood drained from Ned’s face.
“I didn’t know.”
“It wouldn’t matter, would it have?” Massaquoit said, driving his heel down again. “Just some old Indian woman in a cage. That is what you saw.”
“The soldiers are following me,” Ned said, without conviction.
“I do not think so,” Massaquoit replied. “And if they are, they will not get here in time.”
“Are you going to kill me then?”
Massaquoit did not answer right away. He formed his face into an expression of concentration as though the thought had not occurred to him until that moment. He eased the pressure again, enough for Ned to think he might be allowed to rise, but the moment the boy started to roll away, Massaquoit stepped down again, just hard enough to keep him pinned. He took the knife out. It glinted in the moonlight. Ned’s eyes locked onto the blade as Massaquoit ran his fingers up and down the edge.
“Good English steel,” he said. “We Indians, not so long ago, used crude stone. You English have shown us how to use steel.” He leaned down and held the blade against Ned’s cheek. When the boy grabbed his wrist, Massaquoit drew the point slowly along Ned’s cheek and watched as a thin line of blood followed the movement of the blade. “This cuts much better,” he said.
Ned brushed the blood away with his fingers, licked them clean, and then spat into the sand.
“Do it, then,” he said. “I do not care.”
“Patience,” Massaquoit said. He heard steps behind him, light steps, not the heavy tread of the English in their clumsy boots, and he knew before he turned who would be standing there.
“I thought you would have left with Wequashcook,” he said.
Minneseewa took his arm.
“You do not want to kill this boy,” she said.
“No, not yet,” he said.
“Not n
ow, or later,” she said. “We do not need more trouble.”
“You know who he is?”
She moved her hands over her face as though removing the encrusted dung.
“Yes,” she said. “And still I say, let him go.”
Her tone was calm but firm, and it touched something in Massaquoit, something that he had felt adhered to the hard bubble of his hatred for Ned. It was not mercy, certainly not for this arrogant English boy, nor was it fear of English retribution as Minneseewa seemed to suggest. It was, instead, a weariness as though he suddenly had had enough. He stepped back and Ned looked at Minneseewa and then back at Massaquoit. A smile began to curl his lips.
“Listen to the old woman, do you?” he said.
Massaquoit shook his head. The boy was incorrigible. He would not kill him, but he would give him a remembrance. Ned got up to his feet and brushed the sand from his clothes. Massaquoit took his time, and then he brought his foot up as hard as he could between Ned’s legs. Ned gasped and crumbled to the ground. He broke out into a heavy sweat and then his sides started to shake and he put his hand to his mouth.
“You are right,” Massaquoit said to Minneseewa. “He is not worth the killing.”
Ned tried to get up and dropped down to one knee.. He wiped vomit from his lips.
“Let the English take care of him,” Minneseewa said. “He has to answer to them, not to us.” She walked toward the water. “Wequashcook waits. He did not want to, but he does, for me.” She did not look back. Massaquoit watched her depart, and then he looked at Ned, who had now managed to regain his feet and was backing away toward the road to town. In one direction was Minneseewa who was too old to give up the old ways and would live out her days beyond the reach of the English. In the other was Newbury where the English governed and from which their tentacles extended. He had no business where Minneseewa was going, but the boy was part of unfinished business in Newbury. He waited for Ned to stumble into the woods, and then he followed.
* * * *
Catherine lay in bed with her eyes wide open. She had been turning it over in her mind since coming home from the meeting at Governor Peters’ mansion. She had wanted to talk the matter over with Woolsey, but it was clear by the time they had reached her house that her old friend was well past his day’s store of energy. Phyllis, too, had gone straight to bed as soon as Catherine had her bring the blanket to her and then assured her that she did not need her for anything further this night. Catherine found herself wishing that Massaquoit were there. He was one, she thought, to talk to about this nagging doubt, that had been only the germ of an idea a few hours ago, but which had now raised itself in her mind as a proposition whose worth she would have to try.
Some time before the morning, before they listened to Henry Jameson tell his story again, she would have to be prepared. Was he telling the truth? For the more she thought about how he had reacted to the blanket being presented to him, the less sure she was. That reaction argued with her memory of the joy she had seen in his eyes when she told him that his new babe was a boy. She held the blanket, now, up to the light cast by the candle on the table next her bed. She turned it to the side where the strawberry stains were. Could these have fooled him? she wondered. Maybe they could have, along with the fortuitous eclipse of the moon. But maybe he had just seized the moment, and it was that thought, she knew, that was going to keep her awake for the better part of the night. She stared out of the window at the full moon, concentrating on everything she could remember about Henry and Martha Jameson, and Ned Jameson as well, every word she had heard, every gesture, what the other women had said at Mercy Plover’s birthing, and none of it seemed to provide an answer. And then she sat upright in bed as though raised by the realization of how blind she had been in missing the most obvious answer to her question.
All she had to do was remember what Margaret herself had said when Catherine had finally loosed her tongue enough to utter a word. And the word was her husband’s name. No more, and no less. Catherine had thought, until this moment, that she had understood the simple significance of Martha whispering “Henry” into her ear. But now she understood that she had been very much mistaken. She let her self fall back onto her bed and she closed her eyes. All she could do now was wait until the morning to prove she was right. She was sure enough that she was that within a few moments she was deep into a dreamless sleep.
* * * *
Massaquoit sat down beneath a birch tree and leaned against its trunk. He rubbed his back against its bark to quiet his mosquito bites. He had been walking through the woods, directed by the sounds of Ned tearing his way through underbrush and crashing through low branches. Every once in a while, and with increasing frequency, Ned would raise his voice in a stream of profanity as yet again he stumbled and skinned his knee, or walked into a branch that snapped back across his face. The boy had been thoroughly lost for a couple of hours now, ever since he realized that Massaquoit was following him and had tried to lose his pursuer by turning off the road and into the woods. The moon was still bright but in the shelter of the trees its light dimmed among the shadows that lifted and swayed in a night wind.
Ned’s curses and the sound of his clumsy steps were moving away, now, and so Massaquoit got up to close the distance between them. He knew they were heading toward Newbury, but in a very circuitous and uncertain way. Still, it would not be long before they approached the town, and he wanted to make sure he had Ned in sight at the moment.
He walked in the direction from which he had last heard Ned’s voice rising in anger and frustration, but he could no longer hear it. He knelt down and listened for footsteps, but he did not detect any. He started moving again, his ears and eyes straining for any sign of the young boy. He knew he must be close. Then he heard the snapping of a large branch, followed by a thud. He trotted toward the noise, and before long he saw Ned lying on the ground. He moved quietly past him, and Ned did not even note his movement. Not ten feet from where Ned now lay was the edge of the woods, and beyond clearly visible in the moonlight the town square. Massaquoit returned to Ned and nudged him with his foot.
“You are almost home,” he said.
Ned looked up, and then just shook his head.
Massaquoit pointed.
“There,” he said. “Just walk there.”
Ned struggled to his feet, but did not move.
“I cannot go home.”
“Why?”
“My uncle. I fear what he might say. If you have that knife about you, you can use it. It will do as well as the rope.” He sat down. “I am too tired.”
“You hid the blanket. Did you do more than that?” Massaquoit asked.
“As my uncle bid me. But he will not say so.”
“Will he not?”
“I am tired,” Ned said.
Massaquoit sat down next to him.
“We can wait until morning,” he said.
And in the light of the rising sun, Massaquoit led Ned to the Jameson house. They saw the constable nodding at the front door, saw him rouse himself when another constable came to relieve him, and together they awakened the Jameson family and led Henry, Martha, and Ann toward the meetinghouse. As Massaquoit watched the Jamesons walk toward the town center, with one constable in front, and the other behind, Ned darted off into the woods. With a sigh of disgust, Massaquoit took off after him one more time.
* * * *
Catherine strode into the meetinghouse door, holding the folded blanket beneath her arm, walked through the rows of empty benches, and stopped before the table that had again been placed in front of the altar, and behind which again sat Governor Peters and Magistrate Woolsey. Minister Davis, too, had taken a place behind the table instead of standing in his accustomed place behind the pulpit. On the front bench sat Henry, Martha, and Ann, flanked by the constables who had summoned them. Ann held her mother’s hand. Martha’s gaze was uncomprehending. Catherine shifted her glance from face to face and then behind her to the empty building.
“We thought we should hear this evidence without the clamor of the people,” the governor said. “We will inform them of our judgment.” He paused. “You can sit you down Mistress Williams. We do know how to proceed.” He picked up a paper that was lying on the table in front of him.
The front door swung open and Ned came hurtling in, having been propelled by Massaquoit’s hands on his back. Ned stood blinking as though trying to adjust to a bright light. His face was covered with scratches, and his shirt sleeves were dirty and torn.
“Here is the boy,” Massaquoit said. “He got lost in the woods last night, and I retrieved him. When I guided him to his house, he saw the constables and he wanted to run again into the woods. I have convinced him that his place is here.”
Governor Peters put down the paper.
“Ned?” he asked.
“It is as he says. He brought me here.” He looked at Henry and then the paper in front of Peters.
“What has my uncle told you?” he asked.
“Nothing yet,” Governor Peters said. “Sit you down.” He looked at Massaquoit. “You are skilled it seems, both in taking our people away and in bringing them back.”
Massaquoit stood with his arms crossed.
“He is in my service,” Catherine said, “as you remember you put him.”
“Perhaps that was a mistake, Mistress,” Peters replied. “But it is good to have all the Jamesons here.” He slid the paper to Woolsey.
The Dumb Shall Sing Page 21
