He said hastily, “Be ready early, child, it’s a long trip.”
He left, and all afternoon during the dances and festivities, Rachel could not help thinking of her father—even as Praise God carried Mercy over the threshold as the sun was going down. As the custom was, the rosy-faced couple sat in bed dressed in their shifts, and the young people took turns standing at the foot of the bed throwing socks over their shoulders. The belief was that if a sock thrown by a girl hit the bride, or one thrown by a boy hit the groom, it was a sign of a speedy marriage.
When Rachel threw a sock that hit Mercy square in the face, a scream went up, and she ran from the room with her hands over her ears to shut out the rather crude jokes that always accompanied such a feat.
She made her escape from the crowd and walked along the rocky beach. Soon she passed beyond the large rock where it was said the first of the Pilgrims set foot when alighting from the Mayflower.
Weary of the wild singing and loud merry-making, she let the quiet of the isolated beach flow over her. The crashing of the surf punctuated the silence and the cry of the gulls melded with them. She loved this coast, this beach, and for a long time she made her way aimlessly, picking up a shell to examine its intricate whorls, then tossing it back to the sandy beach.
You’re very like your father sometimes. The words of her grandfather came back to her, and she tried again to imagine what he had been like. There was no portrait at all, of course. Few people had such things, for they were expensive. The one portrait her grandfather had was a beautiful oil painting of his brother Edward, the older brother he’d been so close to. Rachel’s mother had told her once that her father had looked very much like Gilbert and his brother. “All Winslow men look alike, they say. But you take after me.”
She thought then of her mother, who spoke of her father in a general way, but Rachel could never get beneath the impenetrable surface of Lydia Winslow’s manner—in this one matter. Once Rachel remembered saying in exasperation, “Mother, you never tell me anything important about my father. Just little things!”
She thought of that conversation as she climbed the hill that led to the house she shared with her mother and grandfather, and her powerful gift of imagination brought it back to her as clearly as if it were painted on a canvas before her. She saw her mother’s smooth face suddenly break in some minute way, and her eyes dropped. Finally she said with just a suggestion of a tremor in her voice, “We had so little time, Rachel! Just a few months, and then he was—gone.”
“Did he love you?” Rachel heard her young voice piping back to the present.
Her mother looked up, her eyes moist as she whispered, “Oh, yes, child, yes! He loved me at first—but later ...” She had suddenly straightened up and said in a tone almost harsh, “He’s gone Rachel, and it grieves me to speak of it.”
Rachel reached the house, a new “salt box” that Gilbert Winslow built when a chimney fire destroyed the tiny house he had built in 1622, when he and Humility had first been married. She passed through the front door into a short entrance hall; to the left was a combined kitchen and dining room, but she turned right into the common room where she found her mother entertaining Mr. Oliver Bradford, the grandson of the famous governor, John Bradford.
“Well, did you get the young folks married, Rachel?” he asked, getting up as she entered. He was a robust man of 46, slightly less than medium height, with brown hair cut short and warm brown eyes. He had always been partial to Rachel, and since the death of his wife, her willingness to spend time with his young children had made him value her even more.
“Oh, they’re tied together forever, Mr. Bradford,” she smiled. “Happy as larks and poor as church mice!”
“Ah, but Praise God is so much in love, he’d never notice a thing,” Lydia laughed. She was dressed in black, as she always was, but the sober garb only seemed to set off her beauty. Her cheeks were as rosy as a girl’s, as were her full lips. Many young women were put to despair when they took in her slender, rounded figure, for at the age of 32, time seemed not to have touched her. Her grandfather had said once, “Rachel, if I didn’t know better, I’d think your mother was a witch! It’s unearthly how she simply refuses to get old—why, she looks exactly the same as she did before you were born!”
Indeed, the dark beauty of Lydia Winslow had drawn men to her for years, but she had never shown the slightest interest in marriage. When Deacon Charles Milton had courted her in vain, Gilbert had said, “Well, Charles has looks, money, charm, and is a godly man, Lydia. If he won’t do, who will?”
His daughter-in-law had only smiled at him, and gone to carry food to a hungry family. The church had become her life, and though many had said that an unmarried man like Gilbert Winslow would have trouble with her, she had spiked those guns by being a handmaiden of the Lord in a way that nobody could fault.
“Did you manage to give the bride a touch with the sock?” Bradford asked with a smile.
“Yes, but I’m waiting for a man like you or my grandfather to come along,” Rachel shot back. Glancing slyly at her mother, she asked innocently, “Did you two settle anything?”
Oliver Bradford had been slow in making his decision. It had been over a year since his wife died, but his sudden frequent calls on Lydia Winslow had been a little too obvious. Everyone in the settlement knew he had made up his mind to marry Lydia Winslow.
His sharp-featured face flushed, and he answered, “We— have talked somewhat, but your mother is reluctant.” He rose, suddenly uncomfortable, and took his leave. Lydia followed him to the door, and they said a few words that Rachel could not catch.
When Lydia returned, she said, “You shouldn’t tease people, Rachel.”
“Why don’t you marry him, Mother?” Rachel asked suddenly. She came to look closely into Lydia’s face, and then, seeing a trace of confusion, she added a question she had wondered about for years. “I’ve wondered why you never married—but then, everybody has. Is it because you’re still in love with my father?”
“No!” Lydia answered brusquely. “No, that would be foolish, Rachel. I shall never marry because I believe that God has called me to live a single life.”
“Don’t you need a man, Mother?” she asked, then flushed suddenly and stammered, “I—I mean ...”
Lydia threw back her head and laughed, and it made a merry sound in the room. “That’s one of the few times I’ve ever seen you blush, Rachel!” She put her arm around the young woman, a younger edition of herself, and laughing, added, “I thought you were much too grown up and ‘advanced’ to be embarrassed by a reference to what the deacons call ‘the intimacies of the connubial bed’!” Then she saw that the girl was really stricken, and she stopped laughing, saying softly, “Most women do need a man, just as a man needs a woman, Rachel. But Paul says, ‘The unmarried woman careth for the things of the Lord, that she may be holy in body and spirit.’ That is what I will do, Rachel—and it is not hard, for we have such a loving Bridegroom!”
Her mother had always had such a close and intimate walk with God that Rachel had learned more from just being around her than from all the sermons she’d heard in church. Lydia Winslow could pray and God would answer. Rachel had learned when she was just toddling that when she scraped her knee or injured herself, she could run to her mother, and as she prayed and rubbed the injury, the pain went away. She never called it “healing”; indeed, she never called it anything; she just did it. Rachel had come to take her mother’s faith for granted, and never questioned her about it.
“Well, Mother, what about me?” Rachel asked suddenly. “I’m going with Grandfather to the Indian Village, and you know I don’t give a pin about that. I’m thinking a lot of Jude.”
She had always been an honest girl, and as Lydia looked into her eyes, she was thankful that her daughter had confidence enough in her to speak her heart.
“He’s getting to be quite prosperous, I hear. How much land does he own now?”
“I don’t kno
w. I told him once he just wanted all the land that joins his, and he got embarrassed. But I don’t care about land, Mother.”
“What do you care about, Rachel?” Lydia asked quietly.
Rachel stood there in surprise. The question had caught her off guard and it went through her quick mind. Finally she said, “I don’t know, but I want to do something!”
Lydia Winslow bit her lip, then said slowly, “That’s your father, Rachel. He was exactly like that.”
“Am I like him, Mother?”
“You have some of my French impulsiveness, but it’s not that I fear.”
“What then?”
Lydia gazed at her daughter steadily. “It’s the Winslow blood. Your grandfather may seem to you the most steady man in the world, but when he was your age, he was wild! And my Matthew had the same restlessness. It sometimes skips a generation, Gilbert tells me, but you have it, Rachel—and that’s why I’ve wanted to see you marry early.”
“So I’ll have a husband to keep me from running wild?”
“You laugh at that, but I’ve seen it happen. Your father was for me all that I could ever desire—but the Winslow blood was strong, and—I lost him. I can’t lose you, Rachel! Not you, too!”
Rachel suddenly found her mother’s arms around her, holding to her fiercely as if to protect her from some sudden danger.
Finally Lydia drew back and said gently, “Well, I’ve wanted to say these things to you for a long time. Now you think I’m just a nervous old woman worried about her only chick.”
“No.” Rachel stared at her mother, and for the first time in her life, she saw her as a woman—not a mother, just as a woman, and it saddened her.
CHAPTER TEN
KING PHILIP
Rachel left the house when the east was barely tinged with the red light of dawn, and was delighted to discover John Sassamon standing beside her grandfather, his bronzed Indian features a welcome sight. “John! You’re back!” She ran to greet him, and in an uncharacteristic move he embraced her. It was a rare gesture; women and men who were not related never embraced, but it was even more unusual for an Indian to show such feeling for a white woman.
But John Sassamon was not a typical Indian by any means. He had been reared in a community of Christian Indians at Natick, fifteen miles west of Boston, and had studied at Harvard. Then in a crisis of identity, perhaps, he had rejoined his native Indians in the wilderness. He served as an aide to Philip Metacomet, the son of Massasoit.
Philip had treasured the young man, and had broken into one of his legendary fits of fury when John had been led by the Spirit of God to return to Natick, where he was given the task of instructing young Indian converts.
Rachel had practically grown up with him, for he had been assigned to study under Gilbert Winslow, and the two of them had been a sturdy pair, accompanying the tall minister as he made his pastoral calls. They had sat together through the eternity-long sermons and studied the same books together, but her fondest memories were their times in the woods. He had made an Indian out of her, teaching her the forest arts of tracking, hunting, and a thousand other facts of the wilderness. She had cried for days when he left to go to Harvard, and beneath his stolid features she had seen that he was saddened, too.
Now he stood there, embarrassed at their embrace, but with a glow of joy in his ebony eyes as he said, “You are a woman, Nahteeah.” She laughed as she heard his pet name for her, “little deer.”
Gilbert said, “You two can renew your acquaintance as we travel. We’ve got a long day’s journey.” The road to Middle-borough, some fifteen miles southwest of Plymouth, was good enough for the cart pulled by one of Gilbert’s two horses, but past there they would have to ride or walk through Indian trails too narrow for any vehicle.
Rachel walked behind with John as Gilbert drove the cart, and after giving him all the news on what his old friends at Plymouth had been doing, she asked, “What are you going to do now that you’re through at Harvard, John?”
“My people at Nemasket have prospered in the Lord, Nahteeah,” he smiled. “I go to be their pastor.”
“How wonderful!” Rachel exclaimed. “That’s not so far. We’ll get to see each other often.”
“That will be good, Nahteeah. I have missed you.” He laughed and said, “Do you remember when you were twelve years old and fell in love with me?”
Rachel laughed in delight at the reference. “I tried to get you to run off with me, didn’t I? And you said, ‘I can’t marry you because I’m going to be a preacher!’ ”
“What a pompous boy I was!” The memory warmed them; then John gave her a look and said with a peculiar tone in his voice, “You haven’t chosen a husband yet, Mr. Winslow tells me. You are fourteen now, and one of our maids would be disgraced if she got to be so old without getting a husband.”
Rachel looked away from him, glancing up at a squirrel chattering angrily at the travelers for disturbing his peace. Then she said with a trace of embarrassment, “There’s plenty of time.”
“Is Jude Alden still courting you?”
The question disturbed her, and she said shortly, “I see him sometimes.”
“He does not love my people, Nahteeah,” John said quietly. “If you marry him, we could never speak to each other like this.”
“He’s a good man! If I did marry him, I would change his mind.”
John gave her a sardonic smile, saying briefly, “That is the talk of a foolish woman, Nahteeah. If a woman cannot change a man’s ways before marriage when he is warm and eager to please her, how can she do it when he has captured her and has no need to satisfy her any longer?”
The statement troubled Rachel, and she changed the subject, but all the way to Middleborough she had turbulent thoughts about what John Sassamon had said. She had long been aware of Jude’s hatred for the Indians, but, despite her close friendship with Sassamon, had tried to ignore his attitude. His prejudice left no room for distinction between friendly and hostile Indians—all red men were “savages” to him. Such a perception was not rare on the frontier, although there had not been an Indian war since the war against the Pequots in 1637. But three tribes—the Nipmuck of Massachusetts, the Narragansett in the Bay area, and the Wampanoag led by Philip in Plymouth—were growing restive under the increasing pressure of white civilization. Living on the frontier was like living on a powder keg, for if war with the Indians did come, there was no protection, no militia or army to keep the tribes at bay.
All morning they kept to a steady pace, stopping only briefly at noon to eat a simple meal of cold beef and bread washed down with cold water from a clear brook. They rested for less than an hour, then continued their journey, but this time Rachel rode in the cart and the two men walked in front. She listened as they talked over the matters of the ministry, and presently they spoke of the low spiritual state of Plymouth.
“You young people must get tired of hearing old men say that the church here isn’t what it was in our day,” Gilbert said. “But it’s true. Oh, there are little fires of true godliness breaking out in places, but I can’t help remembering the first years here.”
“Why is it so, Brother Winslow? Why has the fire died down in the people?”
Winslow thought about the question, and finally said, “It’s partly the easy living, John. People are born in town situations instead of having to wrest a life out of the wilderness. This generation has never known desperate need. They grow up never knowing what it means to be imprisoned merely because they love God enough to put Him first—like John Bunyan. They don’t know what it’s like to have no land and no work and no say in how they are governed. It did something to us, John—the firstcomers, I mean—to live for weeks in wet misery on the open seas, then living in tents or holes in the ground, while cold and sickness ticked us off one by one. I remember one month that first year when we had to bury our dead by night so Indians wouldn’t know how our ranks had thinned! We ate ground nuts or grubbed for mussels to stay alive—and all
for the sake of a vision of a Promised Land!”
John nodded. “I have often heard you say, Mister Winslow, ‘God hears only desperate men!’ ”
Winslow shrugged, and his step was as strong as it had been at dawn, causing Rachel to marvel again at her grandfather’s youthful body. “I fear the only way God will get the attention of our people, John, is for them to become desperate—as we were at the first.”
“You think good times ruin the church?”
“Rev. Cotton Mather believes that. He said in a sermon last month, ‘Religion begat prosperity, and the daughter devoured the mother.’ And he’s not alone, for Daniel Gookin showed me a letter from Judge Sewall, and the wise judge said, ‘Prosperity is too fulsome a diet for any man—unless seasoned with some grains of adversity.’ ”
They passed through Middleborough that afternoon, and leaving the cart with a friend, proceeded on foot to Philip’s camp. It was growing late in the day when they walked into the collection of rude huts, made for the most part of saplings tied together with vines. The smell of cooking fires was in the air, and they were greeted at once by Philip, sachem of the Wampanoags.
“You have come,” he said, advancing to meet them. He held his hands palms up in the traditional Indian greeting, showing that he had no weapons. “We eat first, then talk.”
They sat down in a circle inside his tent, which smelled strongly of fish, dog, and unwashed bodies, and Rachel made a show of eating. The food was some sort of stew in a great iron pot, and the guest simply reached in, pulled out a piece of meat or vegetable and ate it with the fingers. She avoided the meat, knowing the Indians’ weakness for young dog. She had many times seen a squaw knock a puppy on the head, dress it in a few deft movements and throw it into just such a pot; although she had eaten such food, it never appealed to her.
Philip was not physically impressive. He was small, and his slight frame was covered with stringy muscles. A large nose dominated his face, and he had a small mouth which he kept tightly shut. But he had not risen to be sachem over his tribe because of his appearance, but simply because he was by far the most intelligent of all his people. Perhaps crafty was a better word; as Rachel studied the small Indian who was talking to her grandfather, she was struck again with the glittering eyes that illumined his face. She had always been somewhat afraid of the man, and now she felt a chill as he spoke angrily, making violent gestures with his hands.
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