Flight of the Sparrow

by Amy Belding Brown

  Elizabeth is suddenly at her elbow. “We must pray!” she whispers. Mary nods but she cannot bend her heart toward God before locating Joss.

  She pushes through the crowded room to the narrow stairs and climbs to the chamber where her son sleeps. She stares at his empty pallet and tossed blanket, and her heart thumps hard. She glances at the ladder that leads to the attic, and sees a shadow drifting between the rafters.

  For an instant she frowns, puzzled; then she smells smoke and hears the hiss of flame on wood.

  She nearly tumbles down the stairs. “The Indians have fired the house!” she shouts. “The roof is burning!” She runs to the bedstead and yanks Sarah to her feet, ignoring the girl’s bewildered protests. Marie is suddenly next to her, moving like a shadow. Mary drops her free arm over her daughter’s shoulder and hugs her tightly, briefly. Then—finally—she sees Joss carrying a water bucket, weaving purposefully between people. He disappears up the stairs and for one instant she admires his valor. In the next, she fears for his life.

  Ann Joslin, crouched now on the floor against the wall, begins a wild weeping. Mary kneels to calm her. “Fear not,” she says. “I am assured my husband will soon come with the soldiers. Even now, I warrant he’s but a few miles from Lancaster.” She wants to believe this—must believe it—for she sees how plainly her own fear is reflected in the other woman’s face. Ann lapses into whimpers, and then there is only the clout of close-fired Indian muskets and the thud of balls tunneling into the front door. It sounds to Mary like the Devil’s own knuckles, endlessly rapping. She knows she is doomed. They are all doomed.

  Joss runs down the stairs, trailing smoke. Water drips through the ceiling boards. He stands in front of Mary, coughing, eyes bright with excitement even as he confesses that he could not stanch the flames.

  “We must go out!” she cries. “The house has been fired!” In front of her, John Divoll staggers backward with his hand on his neck. Blood runs between his fingers and drips onto the floor. He sinks down on one knee.

  “John!” Hannah’s scream makes the infants wail louder. The dogs moan from the corner but, strangely, they do not bark.

  Mary turns to the knot of children huddled, coughing and weeping, in the middle of the room. She grabs Sarah’s arm and the hand of Elizabeth’s four-year-old daughter, Martha. “Hurry! If we stay here, we will burn alive.” She wonders if they can hear her over the cries inside and the pagan howls outside. Smoke pours into the room, threatening to smother everyone. She doubles over, coughing and coughing into her apron.

  As she straightens, the fire suddenly surges forward from the back of the house. Flames roar overhead. “Joss! Marie!” she screams, dragging Sarah and Martha toward the door. “Everyone! Make haste!” Elizabeth moans and falls back against the chimney wall.

  Sarah begins crying and jabbing her free hand in the direction of the east window. Mary looks to where she is pointing and sees the birdcage hanging on its peg. She cannot make out the bird. Likely it is already dead, killed by the smoke.

  “Mother!” screams Sarah. “Save Row!”

  Mary shouts to be heard over the din. “Nay, Sarah. Come now. We must save ourselves.”

  “No!” Sarah yanks her arm from Mary’s grasp and scuttles back through the huddled people behind them. Martha starts to make the gulping sounds that herald a wail, and Mary picks her up. “Hush, child. I have you now.” She looks for Elizabeth but cannot find her.

  Sarah suddenly appears at her side, carrying the birdcage, which is nearly as big as she is. To Mary’s surprise the sparrow is still alive, fluttering and flapping against the bars. Mary puts Martha down, plucks the cage from Sarah and orders both girls to hold tightly to her skirts. “Do not let go,” she warns, in a menacing voice that does not sound like her own. She moves again to the front of the house.

  The youngest Kettle boy is crouched by the door. “Open it,” Mary cries. “Hurry!” He scrambles to do her bidding. She glances back to assure herself that Joss and Marie are following and then takes a deep breath, pulls the two little girls close, and steps resolutely over the sill.

  She fully expects this to be her last moment. The only thing left to feel is a war club crushing her skull, or a musket ball shredding her lungs before she crumples into a slick of her own blood.

  Yet she stands stock-still on the wide granite door stoop, holding a birdcage, miraculously unscathed. All her senses have exploded wide open. Terror has rendered the world fiercely, acutely luminous, as if even the smallest thing in it is vibrating with meaning.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The sky is an unholy blue. Wind has blasted away the snow clouds, and the rising sun flares above the meetinghouse. The tang of gunpowder fills the air. Scalloped in fresh snow, the shattered stockade wall gapes open. Oddly, the whitewashed fence at the bottom of the yard is still standing, its gate latched.

  Smoke pours from the roof, unfurling a black curtain over the open door. Heat flashes into Mary’s lungs. John Divoll, carrying his son Josiah, bumps her hip as he lurches past into the yard, knocking the cage from her hand. It rolls across the stoop and into the snow. Mary stumbles after John, unable to draw her gaze from the blood still running down his neck, streaking his linen shirt. She feels Sarah take her hand, and then she thinks to grasp Martha’s. She moves forward, pulling the girls along. Her shoes sink into the snow.

  The Indians are everywhere, like a plague of vermin, flowing up the slope from the swamp and down the long hill behind the house, assailing the garrison like crazed rats. They have infested the barn and stand on its roof and peer from its windows; they crouch behind each tree and stone; they turn themselves into stumps in the dooryard, into hummocks of land, into saplings, into the earth itself.

  At the bottom of the slope, the northeast corner of the barn is swallowed in flames. Great red and yellow coils lash the sky. Ropes of smoke trail up from the eaves and thrash across the roof, as if binding it with gray cords. The cow staggers through the snow, bawling; pigs run squealing in all directions. Mary sees Brindle, one of the oxen, swaying beyond the gate. Her great belly has been split open. As she lurches forward, her intestines unravel across the ground.

  Mary’s stomach twists; she bends and retches into the snow, dimly aware that Martha’s hand has slipped from hers. When she straightens, she glimpses the child running back toward the house. She shrieks and starts to follow but immediately loses sight of her in the smoke and confusion. She tightens her grip on Sarah, who is straining toward the cage.

  Mary feels a wedge of dull anger slide between her ribs. She reminds herself that the child is too young to understand their peril. Mary lurches back, grasps the cage in her free hand and carries it away from the house. Sarah, finally cooperating, tries to hurry along beside her, but the snow is deep; their progress is difficult and slow. Mary stops behind a barrel, crouches and draws Sarah down beside her. “We must let Row go,” she says, setting the cage in the snow and unhooking the little door.

  As she reaches inside for the sparrow, she is aware of the absurdity of what she is doing. Why is she taking time to release a bird when the world is being sundered before her eyes? When her life and the lives of her children are in terrible danger? She grasps the sparrow firmly, feels the tiny heart quivering against her palm. She glances down to see if Sarah will protest, but the child has buried her face in the heavy folds of Mary’s skirts.

  Mary opens her hand. The sparrow does not move. She hears women screaming and the fire snarling behind her like a great beast. She throws the bird up into the air, but it drops to the snow, flaps its wings twice and flutters toward the cage.

  Mary stares down at it. She realizes dully that she should have anticipated this. The cage is the only home Row has known for more than three years. Impulsively, she rises and with all the strength she can muster kicks the cage away. It rolls toward the burning house while the startled sparrow flutters over her head. The bird rises
, turns west, then north, darts over the roof of the house, and is instantly gone.

  Mary hears a groan and turns to see Ann Joslin staggering toward her. She is carrying Beatrice, balancing her oddly on her swollen belly. Suddenly an Indian leaps in front of Ann, flourishing his war club. She shrieks and cowers. Mary instinctively moves to turn Sarah away, to prevent her witnessing what will happen next. Yet the Indian does not kill Ann, but grabs her arm and shoves her through a break in the stockade.

  Mary peers over the top of the barrel, looking for Joss and Marie. Everything appears dim and distant in the smoke. Shapes have become shadows. With a roar and the sound of splintering wood, the barn collapses and a dark cloud rises in its place. Mary twists away. She sees that Sarah’s cap has come off and her flaxen curls are flying around her head. Mary lifts her hand to tame them—a simple, foolish gesture in the maelstrom of terror. But it strangely calms her—the feel of her daughter’s small skull beneath her palm, the feathery mass of silken hair, her smooth, sleep-warmed skin. She gathers Sarah closer and looks west, where the forest begins beyond the field.

  She wonders how many more Indians are concealed in the trees. She prays that Joss and Marie have made their way to safety. Perhaps they fled up the hill to the meetinghouse. Surely even Indians would not set fire to a place of worship. She starts in that direction, but again Sarah holds her back, shaking her head, refusing to move.

  “Come!” Mary can hear the fear in her own voice and tries to banish it. “Do not disobey me now, child!” Still Sarah refuses to move. Finally, Mary picks her up and half drags, half carries her as fast as she can toward the gap in the stockade. Her arms shake with the unfamiliar weight and her skirts drag in the snow. Each step seems agonizingly slow.

  She hears a man scream and turns. Hannah’s husband, John, is at the bottom of the yard, halfway between the burning house and barn. He is no longer carrying Josiah but staggering toward the lane, a dark figure against the snow. Even as she watches, he falls.

  The Indians swarm over him, chanting and shouting. They pull off his breeches and shirt and wave them like banners. They yank him naked to his feet and throw him down again. One raises a knife. John shrieks as his entrails pour out onto the snow. The Indians howl.

  Mary cries out, the sound rising the way a blackbird startles from a tree—there suddenly, and as quickly gone. In the next instant, she feels a blow in her left side and staggers back. For a second her whole body is numb, and then pain stabs her.

  It takes her a moment to realize that she has been hit by a musket ball; her skirt waist has been shredded, exposing bloodied flesh. In the next instant Sarah begins to scream, and Mary looks down to see her daughter’s hand, spangled in blood.

  A wave of nausea overcomes Mary and she sinks, pulling Sarah down with her. Her legs fold crookedly under her. She tears off Sarah’s apron and uses it to bandage the girl’s hand. Sarah struggles and cries out.

  “Hush!” Mary whispers, her mouth close to the girl’s ear. “Help me, Sarah. I must stanch the bleeding.”

  Sarah sags and the iron smell of blood fills Mary’s nostrils. It is then that she sees that it is not only Sarah’s hand that is wounded; her entire midsection has been torn open. Mary bites down on a moan, rips off what remains of the girl’s apron and presses it hard against the shredded flesh. At once, blood soaks through the fabric and begins pooling in her lap. Mary feels a great darkness suck her downward. If the ball has entered Sarah’s bowels, she will die. A cold numbness comes over Mary, as if the snow has invaded her heart. She tears a long strip of cloth from her underskirt and wraps it tightly around Sarah’s stomach, then gathers her daughter to her bosom.

  Three of Elizabeth’s sons pass Mary, only yards from where she sits on the frozen ground. Henry and William carry muskets. William is bent forward in a low crouch, dragging his leg, which he injured a few weeks ago in a fall from the barn. Joseph, who is but six months older than Sarah, runs by, his feet throwing up clots of snow. An Indian springs from behind a cart and knocks him to the ground with a single blow to his head. The child does not move but lies on his back in the snow. His eyes are wide, staring at the sky as if surprised, but Mary knows that he sees nothing.

  William turns and wildly swings his musket at the Indian, who howls and dodges away. Another warrior appears and leaps on William’s back. The boy’s good leg buckles and he goes down. Both Indians fall on him at once, instantly crushing his head and neck with their war clubs.

  Stunned and sickened, Mary watches it all. William thrashes briefly and then lies still. The tallest Indian squats over him, draws a knife from his leggings, and cuts away the boy’s scalp. He begins leaping around, waving his hideous prize. Pinwheels of blood stream from his hand onto the snow.

  Mary cannot see Henry. Has he escaped? She hears violent coughing and whirls to watch Elizabeth reel out the door and onto the stoop, smoke roiling around her. Her dark hair has spilled from her cap and she clasps an infant to her bosom. Mary wonders briefly whose child it is.

  Elizabeth sways and takes one step forward, then sinks to her knees. For a moment Mary thinks she has been killed, but then she struggles valiantly to her feet. Nearby an Indian rises from behind a barrel. He wears nothing but a short cape and breeches. He raises his musket and fires straight at Elizabeth. Her arms open, as if reaching for some unseen rescuer and the infant falls into the snow. Mary sees the white horror on her sister’s face before her expression goes flat and she slumps forward. She almost seems to be arranging herself as she collapses next to the infant.

  The Indian scoops up the child in one hand and, holding it by the feet, dashes it against the side of the house. The skull splits open and the snow blossoms suddenly with blood. The warrior contemptuously kicks away the tiny body, as if it is a rotten gourd, then turns to his friends with a triumphant cry.

  Something unlocks inside Mary and, covering Sarah’s face with her sleeve, she lifts the girl into her arms and struggles to her feet. She heads for Elizabeth, who has not moved. Her face is pressed down deep into the snow and it is Mary’s thought that she must turn her sister’s head so she can breathe. When she is only a few feet from Elizabeth, Mary glimpses an Indian rounding the house and coming toward them.

  Her mind is slow and murky, as if the smoke has invaded her head. She stops, sways, starts to turn. Suddenly a war club is thrust in her face and Mary finds herself staring at strange pagan designs etched into the wood.

  The warrior is breathing heavily, so close she can smell the wild, rank odor of his breath mixing with the stink of charring wood. His head is shaved on one side, his remaining hair caught into a long braid decorated with feathers that falls over his chest. He studies her, his eyes moving slowly up and down her body, then fixing on Sarah. Her mind clears and she realizes he’s weighing their lives, deciding whether to kill them.

  “Please,” she says. Her tongue burns and tastes like smoke. “I beg you, do not slay her.”

  Their eyes meet and he lowers his club. Mary steps back, away from him, but before she can take a second step, he stops her with his free hand and plucks off her cap. He flips it into the wind, where it swirls on an updraft toward the ruined barn. Her hair falls down her back and shoulders. He stares at it, perhaps startled by the color, then grasps a handful and brings it to his mouth. Like a snake, his long tongue comes out of his mouth and he licks one strand. Mary shivers in revulsion, but when he tilts back his head and laughs, it occurs to her that her hair may have saved Sarah.

  He catches Mary’s wrist and pulls her quickly across the yard. When she stumbles under Sarah’s weight, he jerks her impatiently. They go down through the yard of blood and churned-up snow, moving past the mangled bodies of her nephews William and Joseph, and past the naked, bloodied corpse of John Divoll. They pass a dead boy’s body sprawled facedown on a rock, his arms twisted in impossible positions. Mary recognizes the tousled hair; it is Josiah, Hannah’s son. She loo
ks away but cannot stop the heaving of her stomach. They go past the barn and out to the lane, where many Indians are milling around. Someone hands her captor a length of braided rope. He fashions a loop and knots it around her neck, tying the other end to his waist. Mary is grateful that he does not try to pull Sarah from her arms. The child is still moaning. Blood runs from her stomach, dripping thickly onto the snow in multiplying spots. Mary’s own wound repeatedly stabs her, but she forces herself to stand tall, sensing that drawing any attention could mean the instant death of her daughter.

  Her eyes burn, her mind swirls, and she cannot hold a thought. Her throat hurts, as if the tears clotted there are barbed. She tries to concentrate on what is happening, but everything is fragmented, confused. Did she not swear she would rather die than fall captive to Indians? Yet now that the hour has come upon her, where is her courage to resist these heathens? Why can she not gather the strength to flee?

  The chanting and cries die away, and for a moment there is no sound except the fire crackling and soughing up the house walls. The air reeks with burning wool and hair. Mary looks back over her shoulder at the house, where flames are busily licking at the three laundry barrels that stand by the door. One of the barrels erupts in flame and breaks open. Its staves fall across the stoop onto Elizabeth’s legs. Mary can watch no longer. She turns away from the sight of her sister’s body, even as Elizabeth’s skirts burst into flame.

  She hears a crow call from the tree by the meetinghouse, and the sound of women weeping. She spots Hannah standing a few yards away. She, too, has a rope around her neck, and is carrying her four-year-old son, William. Mary wants to signal her, but Hannah is not looking in her direction.

  The Indians begin to push the captives into a long line. There are warriors everywhere, hundreds of them. Finally Mary sees—sorrow mixing with relief—that both Joss and Marie are far ahead of her in the line with other children. Two of Hannah’s children are there, and Elizabeth’s three daughters, including Martha. All their necks are bound by ropes. A few yards away, young Henry Kerley sags between two warriors. His arms are pulled behind him and bound to a pole laid across his upper back. Mary feels a great plunging hopelessness fall through her. Her nephew did not escape as she had hoped. Likely no one escaped.