The Blind in Darkness

by Stephen Lewis

  He continued climbing, glancing up at every opportunity to check for further signs of somebody or something at the top, but he saw nothing. He was still ten yards from the top when the sun slid behind the hill and he was immersed into sudden darkness. It would be foolish to continue without being able to see the ground beneath his feet. He had no intention of taking a roll back down the hill, caroming off those boulders he had just passed. And he was sure there was somebody, now alerted to his presence, waiting for him at the top of the hill. He would wait for dawn and proceed at first light.

  He knelt so as to sense the contours of the ground immediately around him, and he was able to make out, a little distance away, a place where two boulders came together to form a natural shelter. He made his way carefully to that spot and crawled between the two large rocks. A fire was out of the question. The nearest firewood was back down among the trees he had left, and besides he did not want to be quite so obvious announcing where he was, even if the most likely person to be waiting for him on the top of the hill was a frightened English boy. He curled himself into a ball and tried to convince himself that he was really quite warm.

  He spent the night in a fitful sleep. Although his ears strained to detect any noise that might announce the advance of an attacker, he heard only his own quiet breathing and the soft rush of an occasional wind, which ceased after a while as the air froze hard and still around him. He awoke before dawn and waited for the first rays to illuminate the ascent to the top of the hill. As soon as he could see his foot and hand holds, he began again to work his way up. He climbed with his eyes scanning the crest, waiting for the movement, he now deemed inevitable, of the person who was holding the blade that had glinted in the sunset the evening before.

  The last five yards were almost vertical. He stood on a narrow ledge a few feet above the last level stretch beneath the crest. He worked his way one way and then the other, but found no easy way to continue. Directly beneath the pine tree the rock face was nicked and gouged enough to provide places to put hands and feet, but it would be a slow and perilous ascent. He pushed his right foot as far into the first niche as he could, but did not manage to get more than his toes, encased in his deerskin boots, into the space. He reached as high as he could with his left hand and managed to grasp a jagged protuberance. He squeezed his palm down on that rock, even though it seemed as though his flesh would rip. He stepped up, swayed for a moment, and then found his balance.

  He proceeded in this fashion, one shallow foothold after another, each time finding something to grab with his hand, until he could just reach the lip of the rock wall that gave to the level terrain of the hill crest immediately around the pine tree. He raised himself another foot so that if he straightened up, he would be able to see over the edge. But he did not do so. Instead, he remained in an awkward half crouch, his feet resting sideways on a narrow ledge, his hands digging into niches that permitted half his fingers to grab. There was another, wider ledge one step higher, but if he were to hoist himself up on to that one, his upper body would be exposed over the top of the rock wall, so he waited.

  When he heard and saw nothing after a few moments, he straightened up sufficiently to bring his eyes to the lip of rock. He pressed his cheek against the cold stone and focused his right eye on the tree, which was now a few feet away. The sun was a little higher now, and its rays reached the left side of the tree trunk, casting a shadow to the right. Massaquoit studied that shadow. It looked a little thicker than the tree trunk itself. The front part of the shadow, closest to him, did not move, but there was a slight tremble in the rearward section. Yet, the air was calm, and the tree motionless.

  He now stepped up to the wider ledge, his eyes on that shadow. He raised his head just above the edge, and looked past the tree toward the cave, but he had his peripheral vision locked onto the shadow. His left hand sought and found a crevice it could grip with full force. He brought his right arm over the top slowly, and ran his hand over the surface of top of the rock as though seeking something to hold so he could lift himself up.

  He sensed the motion before he saw it, and pulled his hand back just as the blade came down hard where his fingers had been a moment before. The blade clanked off the stone, throwing up a small shower of sparks. Massaquoit found the arm above that blade and seized it. His assailant tried to free himself but the force of his downward motion had thrown him off balance. Massaquoit yanked hard on the arm. For a moment they were evenly matched, but then the attacker lost his balance and started to fall. Massaquoit pulled him down, and for a moment the man’s face was even with him so that he could smell his breath and see the rage in the black eyes.

  And then he was gone. His body hurtled over Massaquoit’s head and bounced several times before it landed on the level terrain below the niche where Massaquoit had spent the night. His left hand still holding that niche so hard that he had lost feeling in his fingers, he leaned away from the rock surface to look down. The assailant was lying, motionless, his head at an unnatural angle to his body, and Massaquoit knew that he did not have to worry about him any further.

  A fair sized stone glanced off his shoulder, and then another dropped just behind his head. He looked up and saw that several more were rolling toward the edge and then over it. He put up his hand as a shield and waited for the thin cascade to stop. He raised himself to see where the stones were coming from, and he was just in time to catch a glimpse of yellow hair floating behind a body darting back into the cave. So, he had found the English boy after all.

  He swung himself up and rolled onto the area immediately in front of the pine tree. He was still on rock, and it was coated with frozen dew, so he got to his feet slowly, grabbing a branch of the tree as he did. A couple of steps brought him onto an area of browned weeds made rigid by the cold, and they snapped beneath his feet as he walked to the cave. He kept his eyes on the entrance to the cave, but he saw only dark shadows.

  The entrance was an irregular opening no more than three feet high and less than that across. He knelt down and peered into the cave. The sun was now high enough to shine over his shoulder into the interior, and there he saw, four or five feet into the cave and huddled against the back wall, a figure with head bowed, as though in supplication, arms extended palms upward. He waited for the boy to raise his eye, but he did not do so. He body convulsed from time to times as it shivered violently. The boy was wearing only a shirt and breeches, which were torn at the knee of the left leg. Finally, he looked up and offered a tentative smile.

  “Are you going to kill me?” he asked.

  “I am going to take you back to the English.”

  The boy shivered again, so violently, that he banged his head against the wall behind his head. Then he pointed past Massaquoit, through the cave entrance, toward the tree.

  “They could not decide what to do with me. They argued. Then all but the one down there left.”

  “They did not know if you were worth taking along with them,” Massaquoit said, “whether you could keep up with them because they must know the English are looking for you. But because the English are looking for you, some of them thought you would be worth something in trade. That is what they were arguing about.” He turned in the direction the boy was still looking. “That one must have been your new master. This morning he was going to kill you, but first he would test you to see if you were worthy. If you were not, maybe he would have spared you and tried to see what he could get from the English for you.” Massaquoit held out his hand.

  “Come out into the sun.”

  “No.”

  “You will freeze.”

  “I am afraid.”

  “You must come back with me and tell the English who killed your master.”

  Massaquoit crawled into the cave. The boy turned away from him, and Massaquoit seized his right arm. He backed out of the cave dragging the boy, who offered no resistance. Once outside again, he lifted the boy to his feet.

  The boy stood blinking in the sun. He
wrapped his arms around himself to try to stop the shivers that continued to spasm his body. Massaquoit could now see the discolored bruises on the boy’s face on his cheeks. His lips were swollen and his left eye was partly shut.

  “The man down there has a coat,” Massaquoit said. “An English coat.”

  The boy walked to the edge and looked down.

  “I am not that cold,” he said, “to wear a dead man’s coat that maybe was on the back of somebody that one killed. That’s a little too much bad luck for me.”

  Massaquoit shrugged and scrambled down to the dead Indian. He turned him on his stomach so that he could remove the coat. The man’s neck had broken in his fall, and his head flopped and turned to look back at Massaquoit even as he was on his belly. He turned the head to face front. He dragged the body to the base of a boulder. He gazed up at the sun, which was climbing toward the south from the eastern sky. He turned the body so that the sun was over his shoulder at an angle, facing toward the southwest. He propped the body. Then he knelt down and removed the coat, placing it on the ground next to the body.

  The boy had been peering over the edge.

  “He won’t need that now,” he said.

  Massaquoit looked up, his face humorless.

  “He was not my enemy or my friend,” Massaquoit replied. “His death does not come back to me, and his spirit knows this. I have left him with his back to the morning sun so he can travel to Kanta to meet his ancestors He should travel there with something of his own, not a stolen coat from the English.”

  “Where is this Kanta?” the boy asked.

  “Kanta is a god.”

  The boy snickered.

  “A god. How many do you have?”

  “As many as there are.”

  “We have but one. The true God.”

  “Have you seen this true God?” Massaquoit asked.

  “Of course not.”

  “Is he an English God?”

  The boy started to answer, and then stopped.

  “I suppose,” he said after a while. “But that is a question for those wiser than me.”

  “Do you want to talk about your god and mine, or do you want to get warm?” Massaquoit asked. He picked up the dead man’s coat. It was heavy wool, dark blue, with brass buttons. He ran his fingers down the row of buttons, stopping where one was missing. He felt in his pouch for the object he had picked up near the old English man’s house. He looked at it with his back to the English boy and then slid it back into his pouch. He clambered back up to the boy an held out the coat.

  The boy stepped back.

  “Are you afraid of the coat?” Massaquoit asked.

  “No. But maybe the man what used to wear it.”

  “Do you know who that was?”

  The boy shrugged.

  “I thought I did, but it is a common kind of coat worn by many. And I am cold to the death.”

  “Then put it on.”

  The boy shivered once again and then reached for the coat.

  “What do they call you?” Massaquoit asked.

  “They what doesn’t know better calls me Thomas.”

  “And those that do?”

  He shrugged.

  “That’s for them to know. And who do I thank?”

  “Those who don’t know better call me Matthew.”

  Thomas wrapped the coat about him and after a few moments he stopped shivering.

  “We must go back to the English,” Massaquoit said. “When we find the English you can tell them what happened the night the old man was killed.”

  Thomas looked at him as though seeing him for the first time.

  “So that is the way of it, is it? They must think you did it.”

  Massaquoit shrugged.

  “Well, as for that,” Thomas said. “You might have. It was dark. I heard the old man screaming. I ran out. Somebody grabbed me. He hit me about my face, but he could not hold me. I got away and kept running. If it wasn’t you, it was some other savage.”

  “But I was not there. And if I killed the old man, why would I not kill you now?”

  “You can answer that one better than me,” Thomas said. He seemed to have recovered some confidence with the warmth provided by the coat. He walked past the pine tree and let himself drop the ledge and then to the ground next to the body. He glanced at the dead man, and then started walking down. Massaquoit followed and caught up with him.

  “You are now in a hurry,” he said.

  “Yes, there is somebody I want to see. I expect he is with the English, coming to look for me, like the good lad he is.”

  * * * *

  Catherine arose from her sleepless bed and dressed hurriedly in the dark. The floor was icy cold beneath her feet, and her stomach complained, reminding her that she had not eaten a proper meal in two days. But she had already decided to skip breakfast, so as to make haste to the Rowlands’ house. She was almost sure that when she got there she would encounter a scene of mourning, and that she might well have to help Felicity bury her child as she had helped to deliver it.

  The sun was just rising as she repeated the walk she had taken the night before. The snow crunched under her feet, and the ice sparkled in the early light. She made what haste she could, moving in a rolling gait that somehow enabled her to keep her balance on the slippery footing. By the time she reached the Rowlands’ house, her breath was forming frozen puffs of vapor in front of her mouth, and a sharp pain jabbed her left side.

  Standing in front of the house were Daniel and Master Worthington.

  “Goody Blodgett is inside with my daughter,” Master Worthington said, “so there is no need for you, Mistress Williams.”

  The ignorance and the arrogance of the man, Catherine thought, and with difficulty she controlled her anger. His grandchild’s grasp on life was fragile, and there he stood placing that delicate life in the hands of a woman whose skill was, by common consent, a seed compared to the mature wisdom she herself possessed.

  “Master Worthington,” she said in a voice made calm and reasonable by her need to pass through this obdurate obstacle, “perhaps I can assist Goody Blodgett. It is possible my years may have taught me things beyond her experience.”

  “Aye,” he said, “and that is what I fear. She has told me in truth how the birthing progressed under your direction, and she has said that what you did placed the babe in jeopardy for its life.”

  “Indeed, has she so said?”

  “She has, and further I intend to take the matter of your fitness before the governor.”

  “As you wish,” Catherine replied. “I will be happy to make defense of my actions then, but now my concern is solely for the babe.”

  The door opened behind him, and there stood Felicity, leaning on her mother’s arm. She was wearing only a shift, and she shivered in the sudden cold of the outside air.

  “Father,” the young woman said, “if it please you step aside to permit Mistress Williams entrance.” Her voice was faint, and she looked, if anything, thinner. Catherine wanted to get close to the young woman to talk to her, to examine her for signs of infection and fever that could kill her in a day, but it was clear that Master Worthington’s substantial body, and even larger pride, would prevent her from approaching Felicity. So, for the moment, she contented herself with staring as hard as she could at the new mother. The wind kicked up in a sudden gust and pressed the shift hard against Felicity’s thin body. Catherine could see the outlines of her small breasts now, and she also noted how Felicity immediately pulled the shift away from her chest. So that is the problem, Catherine thought, and will Goody Blodgett have any idea how to deal with it?

  As if he shared her thought at that moment, Master Worthington began, “Goody Blodgett . . .”

  “She abides inside,” Mistress Worthington said to her husband. “Please, Samuel, for our daughter’s sake.”

  “I needs must talk with Mistress Williams,” Felicity said.

  The merchant’s face reddened and his chest, beneat
h his heavy cloak, seemed to expand.

  “Daughter, attend to your babe with the help of Goody Blodgett.” He pointed to Catherine. “I do not grant entrance to this woman. There is no more to be said on that matter.”

  “But Samuel,” his wife began.

  “Inside, I say. Wife see to your daughter. If you both had done as I said in the beginning we would not be standing here now in the freezing cold while the poor babe clings to life because of the evil ministrations of that woman.” He jabbed his finger toward Catherine, and then placed a firm hand on the shoulders of wife and daughter to steer them back into the house.

  Catherine stood long, until her feet numbed and her breath came with difficulty in the frigid air. She could not go inside, but nor could she will herself to leave. She felt a touch on her arm, and turned to find Phyllis standing behind her. Phyllis looked at the closed door and then back at Catherine.

  “Master Worthington says I am a danger to the babe,” Catherine said. “He will not let me attend his daughter or child. He says Goody Blodgett can manage.” She found herself sputtering her words so she stopped.

  “He cannot say so,” Phyllis said.

  “He did, I tell you, but I care not for the man’s calumny, for I can recover my good name, but I do not think that babe will recover its life.”

  “You cannot stand here in the snow,” Phyllis said.

  “That I know,” Catherine said, recovering herself.

  “Are you going home then?”

  Catherine gazed at the plain face of her servant on which her emotions always appeared writ large, as now her concern did.

  “I need to find out what is going on inside,” she said, “and then I can go home.”

  Phyllis nodded her head, frowned, and then smiled.

  “You can go on home, now,” she said.

  “But . . .” Catherine began.

  “I will find out for you while you warm yourself by the fire that I bade Edward tend to while I came after you.”