The Blind in Darkness

by Stephen Lewis

  Even though the path was a foot deep in snow as it wound its way through the trees, around boulders, and down declivities caused by the rills of melting spring snow, his feet remembered it from the last time he had traveled it, now over a year and a half ago. Then, he had been with his comrades, all of whom were now dead, as they raced ahead of the pursuing English to lead them into the swamp where they hoped to lose them in the mud and maze of fallen tree trunks, covered with twisting vines, thick with mosquitoes and flies, and if their pursuers insisted on following them, they would make them pay for their stubbornness.

  The women and children, those few who had survived the massacre at the fort, were huddled in hastily constructed wigwams, eating as little of the remaining food stores as they could. Their sacrifice enabled the men to refresh themselves before confronting the English. The corn meal bread restored their strength but the English were too many, too persistent, too filled with determination to eradicate an enemy they had decided they could no longer live next to as neighbors. Massaquoit and his few companions fought, and ran, hoping to tire and confuse the English, but after three days with their slim food supplies almost gone, their bodies exhausted, and their stoic women no longer able to quiet their starving children, they had surrendered on a promise of their lives, a promise the English violated as soon as they had their prisoners under control. The women and children were distributed as war booty, sent into slavery, and the sachems were taken on board a ship and fed to the waters, all but Massaquoit, saved, against his will, by Catherine Williams.

  All this he remembered as his feet took him without conscious direction back into that swamp, now covered in snow and devoid of all human life, where among those sad memories he would wait and think what to do now that his seemingly implacable enemies had once again manifested their hatred for him. He pushed his way through the desiccated and frozen brambles and vines, which caught at his feet. The path narrowed until it was almost impassable, and then it forked both east and west. East led only deeper into the swamp, he knew, but westward, after twenty or thirty more yards would take him to another clearing and a surviving wigwam where he might hope to find a store of cornmeal. He now began to snap off low hanging branches, so that when he arrived at the clearing he had the makings of a fire.

  * * * *

  Edward was lurking behind the door when Catherine and Phyllis re-entered the house. He peered around them, and then withdrew, shaking his head, and muttering.

  “Get a brand from the fire,” Catherine said to him.

  He looked at her without comprehension.

  “A brand,” she repeated, one that has a bit of fire on its end.” She took his arm, and gave him a gentle push toward the fireplace. She followed, and as he knelt to see if he could find the cold end of a burning stick, she lifted the old matchlock musket from the pegs that secured it to the wall. She shifted the weight of the heavy weapon in her arms and sat down on the bench next to the plank table on which meals were served. She laid the gun in front of her.

  “Find some powder and shot,” she said to Phyllis, “and the aiming stick that should be in there.” She pointed to a corner cupboard, against which a notched pole rested. “The powder and shot are on the top shelf,” she said.

  “I do work in this house,” Phyllis said. “And just what do you think you are going to do with a fowling piece? I do not recall that your husband ever brought home much game with it. He always said it did not sight properly.”

  “It was John that did not see clearly,” Catherine replied. “And what we are going to do is take that musket outside and see what those young men are made of.”

  Edward snapped a twig off the end of a log that had not yet ignited, and held it at the edge of the flame until it caught.

  “That will do nicely,” Catherine said. She bent over

  “I think I will stay inside,” Edward said. “Those boys out there are of flesh and blood. I know that well enough.”

  Catherine looked up from matchlock and nodded.

  “Just keep that brand burning until we need it, then,” she said. She adjusted the length of the match cord in the serpentine clamp, and then she squeezed the lever like trigger. The end of the match cord did not quite reach the pan, so she loosened the clamp, pulled another quarter of an inch of cord through the clamp and tried again. This time the end of the cord butted against the closed pan.

  Phyllis was standing behind her, holding three pouches.

  “Do you remember which goes where?” she asked.

  “The coarse powder down the muzzle, the ball wrapped in a piece of rag if we can find it after. Then the fine powder here in the pan.” She uncovered the lid of the pan. Edward blew on the end of the brand until it glowed red, and then he knocked the ash off.

  “Then,” he said to Phyllis, “you just light the cord while Mistress Williams aims,” he said.

  “Why then you should come out and show me how,” Phyllis replied.

  There was a loud thump on the door. Catherine laid down the musket and went to the window next to the door. Through it, she saw a face brightening and darkening as the light from the torch next to it waxed and waned in the wind. The flame glared in a gust long enough for Catherine to identify the bad complexion and smirking lips of Frank Mapleton staring back at her. He opened his mouth in a smile of yellowed teeth. Two of his companions held a log from the woodpile ready to swing it against the thick door. Frank hunched his shoulders and shivered.

  “Mistress,” he called out, “it is frightful cold out here. And we see the smoke from your chimney.”

  Catherine went back to the table and set the musket on its stock. Phyllis opened up one pouch, put it aside, and then tried the other. She held it over the muzzle and let the coarse powder slide in. Catherine watched, and then held up her hand.

  “Enough,” she said. “Now the ball.”

  Phyllis held a lead ball over the muzzle.

  “You need a bit of rag,” Edward said. He pulled out his knife and slit a piece of cloth from his shirt. He took the ball from Phyllis and wrapped the cloth about it. He put it in the muzzle and rammed it home. Catherine righted the musket and opened the pan. Phyllis poured in the finer grained powder.

  “Take the aiming stick, Phyllis, and Edward, open the door.”

  “Mistress,” came the cry again from outside, and the log thudded against the door. “Mistress, we are cold.”

  “Open the door, Edward,” Catherine said again.

  The old man hunched his stooped shoulders even more than usual in an apparent attempt to render himself invisible as he swung the heavy door open. A blast of cold wind rushed into the house. The two young men holding the log looked in confusion at Frank.

  “Why, step back, lads,” Frank said. “This is the house of a woman that we dare not trifle with. Is that not so, Mistress Williams?”

  For answer, Catherine strode forward, holding the heavy barrel of the musket in front of her. Phyllis followed with the aiming stick in one hand, and the glowing brand in the other. Frank looked at the weapon but held his face in its mask of amused irony.

  “Do we look like turkeys, then?” he asked, but he stepped back as Catherine approached.

  “You look like what you are, a gaggle of insolent rogues,” Catherine said, “who are besetting me in my house and I mean to be rid of you, by any means necessary.”

  She walked into the snow outside of her door and motioned Phyllis forward,

  “Right there,” she said, pointing to a spot in the snow immediately in front of her. “Put it there.”

  Edward hand’s emerged from the shadows inside the house and grabbed the door. He pulled and it closed.

  “Your man seems to be feeling a bit of a chill,” Frank said.

  Phyllis planted the stick, and Catherine let the muzzle down into its notch. She swung the musket in an arc, sighting at each of the half dozen young men in turn, and then pointed it at Frank. He flapped his arm in imitation of a startled game bird.

  “I do
n’t believe that old matchlock will fire,” he said. He pulled a six inch knife from his belt. Its blade glinted in the glare of the torchlight.

  “The cord,” Catherine demanded of Phyllis.

  Phyllis blew on the end of the brand until it glowed red, and held it to the short end of the match cord, exposed at the end of the serpentine.

  “Light it,” Catherine said.

  Phyllis brought the brand to the end of the match cord, and held it until the cord sputtered and ignited. Frank stepped back, holding his knife in front of him.

  “As you know how this weapon works,” Catherine said, “you understand that if I do not pull this trigger before the cord burns down, I will have to adjust the cord, pull out another length, light it again. And it is so cold, as you have said.” She pulled open the firing pan lid. “Perhaps I should just see if this old fowling piece still fires.”

  Frank retreated another step, still waving the knife in front of him.

  “Now, Mistress,” he said. “We wanted only to warm our bones by your fire while we waited for your savage.”

  “The only warmth you get from me,” Catherine replied, “comes out of the end of this barrel.”

  They stood in silence for a few moments, their breaths coming out in frozen puffs. Then, the quiet was interrupted by the crunch of feet breaking through the crusted snow. Master Worthington, accompanied as he was in the morning by Nathaniel and Osprey, approached at a trot. Worthington and his son, both tall, pulled thick woolen cloaks over their faces against the wind, while the shorter Osprey, strode ahead of them holding a wheel lock pistol in front of him in one hand while he pulled his great coat tight around him with the other. The snow had started again, coating his exposed face and beard. By the time he arrived a few feet in front of Catherine, he and his weapon were white. Phyllis, noting the new snow, was leaning over the smoldering match cord, shielding it from the heavy, wet flakes that were rapidly coating everyone and everything.

  Worthington caught up to Osprey and put his gloved hand on the pistol, but he did not yet push it down.

  “How, now, Mistress Williams,” he said, “what have we here?”

  “That is for you to tell me,” Catherine replied.

  “I am sure I do not know.”

  “Do these men not have your coin in their pocket?” she asked, swiveling the musket from one to the other.

  “Certainly not,” Worthington replied.

  Catherine leveled the piece at Frank.

  “And not this one?”

  “He is my servant,” Worthington replied, “but I believe that what he is doing here, he can best explain.”

  A flicker of a frown shadowed Frank’s face, and then he smiled.

  “As you can see, sir, it is a bitter night, and my mates and me was just looking for a little warmth as we passed by.”

  Phyllis kept her hands cupped over the match cord, but turned to offer a look heavy with contempt at the young man. Then she glanced down at the match cord.

  “I think you need pull that trigger now, Mistress,” she said.

  Frank stepped back, and Osprey forward, placing his bulk between the boy and Catherine’s musket. He pointed the pistol at Catherine. Worthington again put his hand on the pistol, and this time pushed it down.

  “Not so,” he said. “Mistress, I mean you no harm, but I do seek your savage.”

  “You must find him yourself, then,” Catherine replied. “And if you seek him, you will need more than this lot,” she said.

  “He need ask only me,” Osprey muttered.

  “I have the governor’s commission to raise a force to pursue those who killed Isaac Powell, and that means I will be seeking your savage as well, so that he might point the way.”

  “And I will be leading that force,” Nathaniel said. His father turned toward him.

  “That is not yet approved.”

  “And yet I will.”

  Worthington shivered in a blast of snow laden air, and then he turned. The others, without a word, followed. When they were some hundred yards away and disappearing into the white blanket of falling snow, Catherine lifted the heavy weapon from the aiming stick, pointed it at the heavens, and pulled the lever like trigger. The cord came down and ignited the powder in the pan into a flash that was followed by a loud explosion that echoed against the howling of the wind.

  Whether Worthington or his men heard the shot, she did not know, but as she turned back to her house she felt the better for its sound giving voice to the violent anger she had not been able to express at the indignity of having her peace and her house so assaulted.

  Chapter Four

  Massaquoit sat huddled next to the fire he had built in the wigwam that contained one half rotted sack of maize, which he had pounded in a mortar and then mixed with melted snow to form a paste that he was now boiling in an earthenware pot sitting on a flat stone in the fire. He heard the footsteps in the snow approaching the wigwam from the north, the side of the clearing facing the forest and opposite the way leading to Newbury. The direction from which the steps were coming, and the recognition that only one person could have found him so soon, told him that he had nothing to fear from this visitor.

  Wequashcook shook the snow from his beaver hat as he stooped into the wigwam, which was still sheathed in the light reed matting it would have for the summer. Nobody had been back in all the time after the disastrous fight in the swamp to cover it with a sturdier layer of bark. As a consequence the temperature inside the wigwam, even with the warmth provided by the fire, was not very much higher than the frigid outside air. Wequashcook made an exaggerated shivering gesture, hunching his shoulders and wrapping his arms around his chest. Without waiting to be invited, he crouched next to the fire and extended his hands, palms down, over it.

  Massaquoit offered a barely perceptible nod, and then looked toward the samp, boiling in the pot.

  “Yes,” Wequashcook said.

  Massaquoit ladled out a heaping portion with a wooden spoon onto an earthenware plate and handed it to Wequashcook. He then served himself. They ate, in silence, with their fingers, as soon as the samp had cooled sufficiently. Massaquoit licked his fingers.

  “I trust you do not have English at your back,” he said.

  “I came from the forest,” Wequashcook answered. “I traveled in a great circle.” He bent over his bowl and scooped up a lump, and then put it into his mouth. “I was in an English house one time,” he said, “and they served this with honey in it.”

  “You did not come all this way to talk with me about cooking.”

  Wequashcook scraped the remaining samp from the bowl and then put it down.

  “A band of English attacked your white woman’s house. I saw them as I was coming back to Newbury.”

  “That is why I am here.”

  Wequashcook nodded.

  “They were looking for you. They thought they could scare the white woman into telling them where to find you.”

  “I doubt they would succeed.”

  “They did not. She and her girl aimed an old musket at them, and then other English came.”

  “Who were they?”

  “I was too far to see. After a while, they all left. And when they were safely away, the white woman, shot the musket into the sky.”

  Massaquoit smiled at the thought of Catherine sending off her visitors with a musket shot.

  “Why do you come here to tell me these things?”

  Wequashcook, in a gesture that had become habitual when his conversations with Massaquoit reached this kind of juncture, ran his fingers over the scar on his head left there by Massaquoit’s knife. But then he shrugged.

  “I do not think I know.”

  Massaquoit studied the other’s countenance, but all he could read there was stony perplexity, and he concluded that he could not provide a better answer to himself for their troubled yet persistent relationship. Wequashcook had led the English to the fort in which Massaquoit’s wife and young son were sleeping. He c
laimed then and ever that he did not know that the English would so brutally attack and leave only ashes and charred bodies. But the fact was that is what happened, and Massaquoit, whose wife was kin to Wequashcook, stopped his hand before he could kill the man he would never forgive, trust, nor forget, and yet here he was sitting beside him, licking his fingers, having eaten the food he had prepared for himself.

  “The English will come looking for Indians,” Wequashcook said. “Any Indian will serve their purpose.”

  “You are welcome to stay with me,” Massaquoit said, and in his mind the offer, although sincere, also contained the alternative, that he would like to keep an eye on Wequashcook.

  “I thank you,” Wequashcook said, “but I do not enjoy your cooking that well, and I believe I can better protect my skin by getting closer rather than further from the English.”

  “I understand you,” Massaquoit said.

  Wequashcook rose to his feet.

  “I never doubt that,” he said.

  Massaquoit watched as Wequashcook stooped at the entrance to the wigwam, parted the mats that served as its door, and then pushed his way out. As he held the mats aside, the wind came rushing into the wigwam causing the fire to rise and then threaten to die. After he left, the fire resumed burning and Massaquoit stared into its flames. In his hand, he held the shiny metal object he had found in the snow. He knew that he must find its owner, and that it would have been a mistake to have asked Wequashcook to help him do just that.

  * * * *

  As befits a man whose money comes from the sea, Samuel Worthington’s large house overlooked Newbury Harbor. His house was set on a rise that gave way to the town dock that Worthington now owned after having bought it from Governor Peters, and from his front door he could see the sails of ships as they entered the harbor. The sight of a sail, in fact, was his chief joy, for each one promised to fatten his already bulging purse with profits from trade and from fees for use of his dock. He was in the habit of walking down to watch an unloading of any ship that came in, even those in whose cargo he had no direct interest, for all trade that flowed through Newbury Harbor was to his financial advantage.