It is dark when Mary returns to the wetu. Quinnapin is gone and Weetamoo is playing with her baby by the fire. Alawa greets her as a friend, as if she had not savagely ripped her clothes off a short time before. Mary wonders if her status among the Indians has changed along with her clothes. She feels confused and weary—and grateful when Alawa scoops a bowl of stew from the pot and hands it to her. They eat in silence, side by side, listening to the babe’s happy chortling as Weetamoo dandles him. Later Alawa makes a poultice of oak leaves and helps Mary apply it to the wound in her side.
• • •
Mary washes herself every day, first at Alawa’s urging, and later because it makes her feel refreshed and calm. Slowly her wound heals. It no longer pains her to strap the pocket around her waist. One day she puts on the apron. Alawa plucks at it and frowns, but no one tells her to take it off. The next day she rolls on her stockings and wears her shift under the deerskin dress. When Weetamoo sees her, she smiles and something in her face reminds Mary of her sister Elizabeth. She feels a brief wave of pleasure, followed by a sinking sensation. She looks down at her feet and sees that the hem of her shift is visible below the deerskin. Her cheeks burn and she tugs at the dress as if she might lengthen it. She knows she looks foolish but finds unexpected comfort in the strange assemblage of clothes.
Mary and Alawa spend much of their time working side by side. Gradually, they begin to communicate more easily. Alawa teaches Mary some Indian words. She asks Mary about her life before she was captured and Mary describes her children and sisters. She tells her about her childhood in Salem and Wenham and explains that she was born on the far side of a great sea.
When Mary asks about her childhood, Alawa tells her that she was born Mohawk and captured by Nipmuc warriors when she was very young. They sold her to a Narragansett, who sold her to a cruel English family in Plymouth Colony. They beat her and made her labor all day and late into the night, so one summer afternoon, when she was sent to fetch water, she ran away. One of Weetamoo’s warriors found her sitting under a tree. She recounts this all matter-of-factly, as if it is not surprising or out of the ordinary. But Mary is stunned; it had not occurred to her that Indians might capture and sell one another.
“So you are a slave as I am?” Mary asks.
“I was slave with English,” Alawa says. “But I not run from Weetamoo.”
Mary thinks of Timothy and her face flushes in private shame.
• • •
Weetamoo’s wetu is daily filled with talking women, and sometimes Mary slips outside and sits with her back against the sturdy bark wall, shivering beneath her blanket. Everyone is waiting for news of the Medfield attack. They are anxious for their men, worried they might not return. Their anxiety reminds Mary of the mood in Lancaster after the Indian raid in August, of the winter evenings she and her sisters sat sewing and talking. Yet it unnerves her to consider that Indian women might be so very much like Englishwomen.
She is surprised at how often Weetamoo leaves her to her own devices. She must realize Mary knows she cannot survive alone in the wilderness long enough to make her way home. Her disinterest grants Mary an uncommon freedom, and often little to do. All her life, Mary has been closely watched, and required to toil from waking to sleeping. She has been taught that idleness is a sin, and has long resisted its temptations. Yet, in her new position as a slave, she is often forced to it.
Slowly, Mary discovers in idleness a strange expansion of time and a growing awareness of the natural world. She begins to watch the flight of sparrows through the winter air and the dance of red squirrels in the trees. She notes the changes in clouds, the slant of sunlight as it falls on snow, the tight red buds of winter trees. All these things she has seen before, but only as background to her life’s duties. Now she begins to understand that trees and birds and clouds and animals have a significance of their own that is independent of human activity.
It is an astonishing thought. She has never heard anyone express such an idea before.
One afternoon, squatting in a small pool of sunlight that is all the warmth the season has to offer, listening to the calls of birds, she hears a shout in the distance. It is echoed by another, and then a third, and soon by an entire chorus of whooping shrieks. Alarmed, she gets to her feet.
All around her, women rush out of the wetus and hurry along the path through the village. Mary follows at a distance. She does not wish to be observed, but is determined to discover the source and significance of the cries.
In the center of the village a circle of women is singing and shouting. The women laugh and sway as they sing. They raise their arms joyfully. Their song is wild and disharmonious, but Mary feels strangely moved. She finds herself swaying at the edge of the circle in time to their music.
Slowly she begins to understand what she sees and hears. The women are echoing the shouts of returning warriors. The attack on Medfield has been successful. The Indians have killed many English. They have brought the scalps to prove it.
Mary stops moving. The truth lies like a stone in her heart. She pictures the bloodied snow of her yard, Elizabeth’s body lying broken before the door, her skirt in flames. Again she hears William’s screams as war clubs crush his skull.
In shame, she leaves the circle and the singing to return to Weetamoo’s wetu and its solace of shadows. She cannot stop trembling.
CHAPTER TEN
At dusk, Weetamoo orders Mary and Alawa to attend the celebration in the center of the village, where a great fire pit has been dug, filled with logs and surrounded by stones. The fire is roaring, wood snapping and flinging embers high past flames that rise to the full height of a man. The scent fills Mary’s nostrils, reminding her of her burning house.
Men and women mill about and cluster in small groups, talking. Children chase one another, laughing, as they dart in and out among the adults. Four men sit around a drum of tanned deerskin stretched over a huge wooden hoop. They beat it with sticks, striking together so the drum makes a deep rolling boom each time, one that rings in her ears and thrums in the soles of her feet. Warriors bob and writhe in a circle around the fire, striking the grotesque poses she witnessed the night after her capture. Many are shirtless, despite the cold. They have painted their faces and chests in strange patterns of red and black. A group of women stands near the circling, singing; their strange undulating chants make Mary’s skin prickle.
Alawa clears away snow near a tree and invites Mary to sit beside her. Mary cannot draw her gaze from the dancers. Their wild joy bewitches her. She sees the man who first captured her and the one they call Monoco. Then Quinnapin steps into the circle. He seems almost regal to Mary, his movements at once graceful and commanding. The longer she watches, the more enchanted she is by the dancing. The drums beat on into the night and she feels her own heart echo their rhythm.
Some men dance for so long they stagger and collapse when they leave the circle. One falls as he dances. His friends quickly carry him away. After a time Mary finds her own shoulders swaying to the drumbeat. Dismayed, she closes her eyes and beseeches God to rescue her from this captivity before her soul is unalterably corrupted.
She hears Alawa say something and opens her eyes. The English Indian is standing in front of her. He is naked, except for a breach clout and a pair of leggings. A black feather is stuck in his hair. His face and chest are painted in jagged red designs. He kneels, and reaches into a pouch hanging from a cord around his waist. He draws forth a book and holds it out to Mary.
“Take it,” he says, dropping the book into her lap. “It may bring you some comfort.”
She looks down, but does not touch it.
“’Tis a Bible,” he says. “The spoils of battle. I bargained hard for it.”
She feels a terrible confusion—gratitude and longing mixed with caution. Did he fight in the battle? Did he slay English soldiers? She wants the Bible but fears what taking it migh
t cost her. “What do you want for it?” Her voice is hoarse.
She detects a flicker of irritation under the paint. “I want nothing. It is a gift.”
She picks it up and opens it. It is, indeed, a Bible, cunningly made, covered in leather, the pages nearly as white as the snow that lies around them. “I thank you,” she says, glancing up to meet his eyes. “It will be a great solace.” She looks away, for her face is suddenly warm.
Alawa jumps up, takes her arm and tugs her to her feet. The Indian says something to Alawa in a language Mary cannot understand.
“Be diligent and wise and they will not harm you,” he says to Mary as Alawa releases her.
Mary nods. She feels Alawa standing behind her, watching.
“I am most grateful,” Mary says. “But tell me, please—may I know your name?”
He hesitates for only an instant, and she senses he is studying her, looking for some sign of sincerity in her face. “Wowaus,” he says. “But you will find it easier to call me James. ’Tis my English name.”
“James,” she says. “’Tis a good name. The brother of our Lord was James. You are a Praying Indian.”
He nods. “I am also called the Printer.”
“Printer?”
He nods again, smiling this time. “I was a printer’s apprentice.”
She knows that Praying Indians are farmers—and poor ones at that. From what Mary has seen, most are little more than beggars. “I have not heard of any Indian taking up a trade.”
“You do not believe me,” he says. She realizes—too late—that she has insulted him. A poor payment for his kindness.
“I meant no offense,” she says. “I was merely surprised.”
“There is much about Indians that will surprise you—if you but open your eyes.”
She is stung. She looks down at the Bible in her hand. “Will I be punished if they see me reading it?”
He shrugs. “I think it is of little importance to them.”
“Thank you, James,” she says, reaching toward him this time, and then quickly withdrawing her hand, for she is afraid that if she touches him, she will not want to let go. “Thank you for everything.”
He nods once more and turns away. She watches him leave, watches the muscles in his shoulders and calves as he moves into the shadows, until all she can see is his silhouette against the fire.
• • •
The Bible is a comfort. Mary keeps it in her pocket, thankful that it is small enough to be stowed there. When chance allows and Weetamoo’s attention is elsewhere, she takes it out to read. It is her hope and consolation—a raft she can cling to as she tumbles in a pagan sea. She thanks God for James; she tells herself that the Lord sent this kind man to watch over her, like a guardian angel. These thoughts help her to forget the troubling feelings that invade her in his presence.
She does not see him for some time after he gives her the Bible. The more days that pass, the more she finds herself longing for another encounter. She knows such feelings are wicked, yet it is a comfort to know he is somewhere in the camp.
Mary becomes gradually aware that a man is following her around the village. When Weetamoo sends her to fetch water or gather wood, Mary sees him skulking behind her. Finally she identifies him as Monoco. He has a strong nose and wide brow, smooth skin and a long neck. He might be handsome except for his ruined left eye, which is sunken deep in its socket. He does not speak to Mary. Yet when she glances in his direction, he gives her a leering grin. His face reminds her of a picture of the Devil she once saw in a book of Joseph’s. She makes a point of avoiding the lonely places at the edge of camp, places where the forest rises up to block the sun, where she cannot be seen.
One afternoon, as she gets water from the river, Mary sees Monoco sitting with Quinnapin under a tree. The two men are laughing and talking, smoking long pipes of tobacco, the spicy scent drifting on the wind. As she approaches, they stop talking and study her. The hairs on her neck rise. She feels as a hunted deer must feel—wary and doomed. She quickens her pace and ducks inside the shelter, where Weetamoo sits playing with her babe. Mary has learned that he is nearly four months old, a solemn black-haired boy whose dark gaze has often fallen on her. Weetamoo has unwrapped him from his cradleboard and is caressing his arms and legs, moving them in some rhythm Mary cannot follow. He looks too thin, yet he chortles heartily. She thinks immediately of Sarah and feels a terrible grief. She turns away and bumps into Monoco, who has followed her into the wetu. Quinnapin stands behind him, grinning.
Monoco grasps her shoulders and takes a strand of her hair between his fingers. Weetamoo looks up from her child and says something to him. He responds with a string of Indian words. His tone is eager but deferential.
“Matta!” Weetamoo says sharply. “Monchish!”
Quinnapin laughs. Monoco drops Mary’s hair and backs away. His expression reminds Mary of a small boy whose knuckles have been rapped. She is shocked at what she has just seen—a man publicly chastised by a woman. It would never happen in Lancaster.
Mary looks at Weetamoo, who is once again absorbed with her babe. She is puzzled that she can treat a man with such insolence and suffer no public rebuke. Yet Mary senses that she has in some way saved her from a disagreeable fate. She feels a welling, if reluctant, gratitude, which she has no idea how to express.
• • •
For a week, the village lies under a spell of quietude. Then a great restiveness begins. The women go about their tasks with quickened pace. The men gather at dawn in small groups and disappear into the forest, returning with freshly killed animals. The new vitality is infectious—Mary feels her own slothfulness fall away and performs her assigned tasks with new liveliness and vigor. She begins to understand Weetamoo’s words and grows alert to her moods. The woman has the capricious temper of a tyrant—content one minute and vexed the next. Mary forages for wood, fetches water, scrapes hides, and grinds corn on a stone. She tends the fire, searches for groundnuts and berries. She repairs the great mats that line the interior of the wetu, weaving bulrushes and hemp with a double-pointed needle made from the split rib of a deer. She smokes squirrel meat and sweeps the wetu’s earthen floor with a pine branch many times each day. Her mind quickens and she casts aside her grief.
It is the Bible, she tells herself. God’s word has come down upon her like rain on a parched desert. The knowledge that it lies in her pocket calms her as she works.
When Weetamoo gives her permission, Mary goes in search of her children, but the only person from Lancaster she finds is Ann Joslin, who is hugely swollen with her unborn child. Mary feels a rush of pity when she sees her sitting by the path between two elderly Indian women, picking nits out of her daughter Beatrice’s hair. Mary thinks of the difficult final days before she brought forth her own children. She was clumsy and uncomfortable all the time.
“Good day, Goody Joslin,” Mary says, hoping the familiar greeting will cheer her. “You look well.” Though, in fact, she does not. Her cheeks are sunken, her eyes furtive; her arms beneath the dirty sleeves of her linsey-woolsey dress are little more than bones. Mary draws a scrap of dried corn cake from the bottom of her pocket and holds it out. Ann takes it, glancing warily at the two Indian women.
“Have they worked you very hard?” Mary asks.
Ann shakes her head. “They have given me little to do. Yet they do not allow me out of their sight.” She touches her belly. “I believe they wait for the child.” The whites of her eyes are yellow, like scraps of old parchment. “I fear they will take him from me once he is born. They have a special fondness for the flesh of—”
“Come,” Mary says quickly. “Let us talk.” She picks up Beatrice, who does not protest, and walks a short way up the path. Ann follows. The girl’s weight is a sweet burden in Mary’s arms, reminding her of Sarah.
“How long before you deliver your babe?” Mary knows A
nn must be terrified of the ordeal ahead. A woman’s travail is dangerous enough in a civilized English home.
“A week, I think. Not more than two.”
Mary tries to reassure her. She tells her that she will seek Weetamoo’s permission to attend her labor. That she will pray for a safe delivery, for the health of the babe. Ann nods respectfully, but her attention is scattered and fitful. Finally, she confides in a whisper that she plans to escape and make her way home.
Mary stares at her. “You cannot mean that. We are at least thirty miles from an English town.” She takes her arm, as if to hold her. “There are hills to climb and rivers to cross. You cannot hope to survive by yourself.”
“I have begged them to let me go.” Ann’s voice is clogged with tears, though Mary sees none on her face. “All they do is mock me. I can bear it no longer.”
Mary wonders if Ann has gone mad. This is more than a woman’s ordinary fretfulness as she nears her time. “You must not flee. For the child’s sake, if not your own. It would be a terrible sin.”
Ann looks at her as if her words are nonsense. “What matter is sin? God has abandoned us.”
The words fall like a blow. Mary feels suddenly afraid. “Ann, you are not well. Your spirit and your body are feeble. You must listen.” She sets Beatrice on the ground, draws the Bible from her pocket and begins to read Psalm Twenty-seven aloud. Ann stands with her head bowed, Beatrice slumped against her skirts. When Mary is done, she looks up and sees immediately that Ann has not absorbed the words, for she is shaking her head. “I shall not see you again,” she whispers.
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