Flight of the Sparrow

by Amy Belding Brown

  “No! You must not speak so.” Mary cups Ann’s face between her hands. Her fingers make jagged streaks in the grime. “You must wait upon the Lord.”

  Ann sags away.

  “Promise me,” Mary says. “Say you will wait upon the Lord’s deliverance.”

  Still, Ann says nothing, but stands gazing at the wetus and the frozen river beyond.

  • • •

  Weetamoo kicks Mary awake early the next morning and orders her to fetch water. As Mary hurries through the village, she sees women packing blankets and pots and kettles and loading them into baskets and onto small sleds. When she returns, Weetamoo orders her to help Alawa roll up the sleeping skins and remove the wall coverings inside the wetu. Mary works diligently to quickly untie the great woven reed mats. Her heart is beating too fast. She senses the sluice of excitement and worry swirling around her, feels part of it. Soon only empty shelters remain.

  Alawa tells her that everyone is leaving Menameset. Mary feels a rush of panic. The longer she stays in one place, the greater the opportunity to find her children. And the greater likelihood they will be rescued.

  “No,” she says. “I cannot go.” She shakes her head and waves her hands in the air to demonstrate her urgency. She goes to Weetamoo and begs to be allowed to stay. “Leave me here under guard,” she says. “I will only hamper your travels.” She hunches over and takes a few shuffling steps to demonstrate how weak and slow she will be on the trail.

  Without warning, Weetamoo slaps her across the face. The blow is so hard, Mary staggers back and nearly falls. When she claps her hand over her stinging cheek, Weetamoo yanks it away and strikes her again, shouting words Mary cannot understand. But she doesn’t need words to know her life depends on Weetamoo, that she must do her bidding to keep it.

  Her heart fills with rage as she fills the large carrying baskets under Weetamoo’s direction—some with corn, some with skins, some with small pots and pouches of herbs and tobacco. She has never been treated so cruelly, certainly not by another woman. It is unnatural, a perversion of God’s order, she thinks. She works with a cold fury, yet it occurs to her late that morning that this indignity is what Bess suffers in her indenture. What slaves everywhere suffer. Her positions as minister’s wife and the daughter of Lancaster’s richest landowner have protected her from perceiving this. Now she is no longer a woman but a slave. She has become a beast of burden, an object to be used and discarded at the whim of her mistress.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  They set out at midday. The sky is gray with low clouds. Mary is given a tall basket filled with corn. Alawa shows her how to carry it on her back and secure it with a strap across her forehead. Mary walks behind her on the trail, the last in Weetamoo’s group and burdened with the heaviest basket. Her feet hurt and pain runs up and down her arms and legs. Her head aches from the pressure of the strap and soon she is so dizzy she has to stop and lean against a tree so the world will stop whirling. When Weetamoo happens to turn and see her, she shouts and brandishes her club. Mary forces herself to continue walking.

  Trees rise like black pikes against the sky. It seems to Mary that the heavens are always gray in this bleak season, always threatening snow. She tries to pray. She thinks about the Israelites who wandered forty years in the wilderness, remembers how they struggled to be faithful to the Lord. How wickedly they strayed. She reminds herself that her chief task is to stay vigilant every moment so that evil will not overtake her while she busies herself with living.

  At sunset they come to a clearing. It is a barren place—a ridge of snow-covered rocks with no trees or hills to break the wind. The Indians mill around, trampling resting places into the snow, and Mary realizes that they’ve stopped for the night. The women pile up pine boughs to lean against and then build fires and take out mats and skins from their packs.

  Weetamoo directs Alawa and Mary to build a small shelter of mats, barely big enough for Quinnapin and herself and their infant son. Then she shoos them away. Alawa builds a fire and scoops out a hollow in the snow nearby, and she and Mary huddle together under blankets. Snow clings in clumps to Mary’s back and thighs. Her dress is wet from hem to waist, and she is so cold she cannot stop shaking. She edges close to Alawa for warmth, curling up next to her, trying to sleep. Alawa’s breathing slows and deepens, yet Mary cannot relax. After a while, she takes out her Bible and tries to read a few lines by the fire but the light is not sufficient. She finally dozes with her head on her knees. When she wakes in the morning, her arms and legs have stiffened so that she can barely move.

  Weetamoo seems to have forgotten her. She does not give her orders or access to the stew pot. Mary must fend for herself or starve, so she walks through the camp, lighting on scraps of food—a few crumbs of corn cake here, some dried berries there, a chestnut begged from an old woman.

  She searches for Ann Joslin to see how she fares, but she is not in camp. Later, Alawa tells Mary that when the Indians left Menameset, they divided into several groups and went in different directions, taking their captives with them. Mary wonders which direction her children have gone and when she will see Ann again. It distresses her that she may not be able to keep her promise to attend her labor.

  The men come and go. She assumes they are hunting, but their luck must be very poor, for there is no sweet smoke of roasting game, no cries of pleasure that would accompany a successful hunting party’s return. In fact, the quiet is profoundly unsettling.

  Near sunset, a warrior comes into the camp. Mary is cheered to see that her sister Hannah’s son, John, is among the party. She sees him from a distance—his face is smeared with dirt, but his eyes are bright and he does not have the lean look of the hungry about him yet. She follows him and finds him playing a game with pebbles on a patch of earth cleared of snow. When she inquires, he tells her that his master’s sons taught it to him.

  “You must be wary of taking their customs,” Mary chides. “Be firm in the Lord lest you turn heathen. The Devil is very cunning.”

  He nods but does not look at her. He seems completely absorbed in his game.

  “Have you seen your mother?” The thought of Hannah makes her ache, for she has not laid eyes on her since the day of the attack.

  John shakes his head and then, suddenly, drops his pebbles and breaks into tears. Mary touches his shoulder, wishing she had taken more care in speaking. “What troubles you?” she asks gently.

  “I have seen what they do.” He swipes fiercely at his eyes. “My mother—I do not think she is strong enough to bear it.”

  “To bear what?” Mary feels alarm on Hannah’s behalf. She puts her arm around his shoulder. “Be strong,” she says. “We must trust in the Lord that all will be well.”

  He looks at the ground. Slowly, he begins to explain. He tells her that Goody Joslin was one of the captives in his group when they left Menameset. She trailed after the others because of her condition, and also because she had to carry Beatrice. She complained constantly that she was miserable, claiming that her time was near, begging the Indians to let her go home.

  “She wailed. It was terrible to hear,” John says. “We begged her to be quiet, but she would not. She appealed for mercy to one Indian after another. None would heed her. After a time they grew vexed.” He picks up one of the pebbles and lets it fall again. “We stopped to rest. They ordered all the captives to stand in a circle. Everyone, even the children. Then they put Goody Joslin in the center. Two women stripped off her clothes. They made us all dance and sing around her.”

  Mary is scarcely able to breathe.

  “I danced,” John whispers. “I had to. If I had not, they would have slain me.”

  She does not want to hear his story any longer. Yet she understands he needs to tell it, and that she must know the truth. “You did no wrong,” she assures him. “’Tis no sin to do what you must to live.” She thinks—even as she speaks—that she might be wr
ong in this. Joseph would surely think so. Yet it seems important to her now to console the boy.

  “She was shaking and weeping. It was so cold her skin was turning blue. I could not bear to look at her.” He takes a loud breath. “After the dancing, the warriors beat her head with their clubs until she fell dead. Beatrice cried and so they killed her too. Then they built a fire and threw both bodies in it. All the Indians danced and cheered.” He sniffs. “They made us watch until they were burned to ashes. Then they told us that if we tried to run away home, the same would happen to us.”

  Mary feels sick. She can summon no words of assurance or comfort. She knows now that she counseled Ann in vain; the poor woman was unable to endure the trial God set before her. Because it was too hard, she thinks. Some trials are monstrous. Sometimes God asks too much.

  • • •

  At daybreak the next morning, they begin to march again. They walk all day without stopping to eat. They are to gather what food they can as they walk. But Mary finds nothing. That night they make camp and this time they build a wetu. Mary is nearly euphoric with gratitude when Weetamoo invites her inside to share the thin gruel that simmers over her fire.

  They stay in camp for several days. The people seem happy, despite their hunger. In the daytime, they sit talking in small groups. Mary is surprised to hear them laughing; it seems almost profane in the face of their troubles. As if they are laughing at their own deprivation.

  In the evenings Mary watches Weetamoo unbraid her hair and shake it out so that it streams down her back to her waist. She dips her fingers into a pot of ointment and runs her hands through her hair many times. Soon it gleams in the firelight. Then she plaits it again, into two shining braids.

  One night Mary touches her own head, where her hair is matted in a disordered tangle. It seems an impossible task, yet she begins to work at it with her fingers, picking and smoothing, until the strands come loose from one another and fall onto her shoulders and back. She senses someone behind her, then feels Alawa’s hands move into her hair. Mary sits back on her knees while Alawa applies the ointment, smoothing it along the strands. They do not speak. The motion is almost like a caress. It is deeply soothing and the sensation reminds Mary of the times she and her sisters combed one another’s hair when they were girls. Finally Alawa divides her hair into three sections and braids it into a long plait.

  “Thank you,” Mary says as Alawa turns away. Mary feels as if she’s been ministered to in an extraordinary way. She feels contented and womanly for the first time in weeks. It is not until she slides under her sleeping skins that it occurs to her that she is becoming more Indian-like in her appearance and manner. She knows that she ought to fear for her soul. Yet she feels only comfort and peace. And gratitude.

  • • •

  The next morning, they break camp and set out on the trail. They walk for days, stopping only to sleep at night. Though the basket she bears on her back is heavier than anything she has ever carried, Mary feels her body gradually harden and grow strong. She sees many strange and kindly things in the Indians’ treatment of one another. Once, she catches a glimpse of James as he carries an old woman on his back up a long hill. She remembers the kindness in his eyes and has the errant sinful wish that he might carry her, that she could lie against his back and feel the rhythm and warmth of his muscles moving beneath her breasts. Instantly she rebukes herself, knowing such thoughts contaminate her soul. She tries to concentrate on memories of her husband. Yet Joseph seems very far away.

  They come to a wide river that tumbles with ice and white water. The women sit by the bank while the men work furiously, felling trees with their hatchets and constructing rafts. Mary huddles in her blanket, watching, her ears filled with the water’s roar. She sees great lumps of ice spin and leap in the river.

  There are so many people that it takes two days to ferry everyone across. When it is Mary’s turn, she scrambles with others onto a pile of brush at one end of the raft and she crouches there while a warrior stands at the other end guiding it, swaying and tossing, to the far bank. The sound is deafening as the water rages, splashing icy foam over everyone. Miraculously, no one is tossed overboard.

  As soon as they are across, Weetamoo directs the women to build wetus so all the people can rest and warm themselves. Mary works so quickly that her fingers crack and bleed; she is as eager as anyone for a wetu’s comforting warmth.

  The men dig a fire pit and boil a horse’s thigh in a great kettle. Everyone is invited to sip the hot broth. The camp remains there for nearly a week. Mary has little to do but search for food and read her Bible. One afternoon, to busy herself, she begins to knit a pair of white cotton stockings with the needles and yarn in her pocket. When Weetamoo sees what Mary is making, she demands the stockings. Mary gapes up at her, pretending she cannot understand. Alawa, who is sitting nearby, tries to take them away but Mary jerks them from her and jams them into her pocket.

  “They belong to me,” she says. “The yarn and needles came from my own house. My skill was given me by the Lord.”

  Weetamoo picks up her war club and shakes it menacingly in Mary’s face. “They are mine,” she says in English. “All you make is mine. You are slave.”

  Mary is shocked to hear the English words coming from Weetamoo’s mouth. When she raises the club again, Mary nods and says, “I will make the stockings for you.” For the moment, Weetamoo seems satisfied.

  • • •

  Just after dawn the next morning, the warriors torch the wetus so the English soldiers will not be able to shelter in them. Then everyone marches north. As they climb a hill, Mary looks back over her shoulder and is surprised to see a group of English soldiers standing on the far bank of the river. She feels a throb of exhilaration, certain they will soon rescue her and the other captives. She wonders if Joseph is among them. Perhaps he even led them to this place.

  Yet the English do not come, and after a time Mary realizes they are afraid to cross the river’s fury. She catches glimpses of warriors running back and forth along the shore, taunting the English, and she feels a dark shame rise in her. She knows Indians despise weakness of any kind. She is humiliated that the English soldiers lack the courage and vigor to do their duty.

  More troubling are the dark questions that underlie all her other fears: Where is Joseph? Why has he not yet come?

  For hours, the air is thick with smoke from the burning wetus. From the top of a ridge, Mary watches flames licking up into the trees. Then the warriors lead everyone away.

  The trail is narrow and steep and there are many people, all weary and weak from lack of food. Mary is faint with hunger and sore from the effort of carrying her basket. They go up a long hill, so steep she thinks her legs and heart will fail her as she climbs. As they descend into the valley, the trees thin out and reveal the abandoned fields of an English farm. Brown spikes of old cornstalks poke through the melting snow. Sheaves of wheat stand frozen in shocks.

  The women move out over the fields to glean what corn and wheat is left. Mary wearily follows Alawa. After a while she finds a broken ear of corn, then a second. She loses one to a woman who snatches it from her hand. When Mary yells and starts to run after her, a group of women quickly surround her, blocking her pursuit. They laugh and point, mocking her. She stands with her head bowed, waiting for the dark flush of anger to drain from her face. After a while, the women lose interest in taunting her and gradually drift away.

  They return to the trail and continue down the hill into a swamp. Dead trees and stumps rise in front of Mary. Vines run along the ground and reach out to bind her ankles and scratch her legs. More than once her foot sinks into the boggy ground. She feels she has descended into a dungeon from which she will never escape. She has heard that Indians often hide from their enemies in swamps because the treacherous footing makes it difficult even for those who live in the area to track people.

  Men scout
for patches of firm ground and decide where they can safely erect new wetus. They cut saplings, peel off the bark and then bend them into arches, pounding each end firmly in the earth. Women split the sapling bark into thin strips and use them to tie the wetu frames together. Men slice squares of bark from old trees and women lash them to the frames. The new village rises quickly; by nightfall the swamp is a jumble of domed huts. The men dig a fire pit and there is an air of excitement in the camp. Even Mary is caught up in the enthusiasm as the stew pots are thickened with grain and maize.

  She is sitting outside Weetamoo’s wetu when she sees James walking toward her, carrying a basket on his shoulder. She rises to greet him, but he does not acknowledge her. Instead, he stops to talk with a group of men lounging outside a neighboring wetu. He is so arrestingly happy that Mary cannot help herself—she calls his name. He turns, smiling, and approaches her.

  “What have you there in the basket?” she asks.

  “Ah—Mistress Rowlandson—I didn’t realize ’twas you, sitting there as quiet and docile as a maiden.” He laughs and slides the basket from his shoulder to set it on the ground. When she sees the slabs of meat piled there, her mouth fills with spittle and her belly twists in hunger.

  “’Tis horse meat,” he says. “Some warriors slew a mare and I was given the task of distributing it.”

  “Give a piece to me, then.” She holds out her hand.

  “What would you have?” His eyes dance. “A portion of liver?”

  “I yearn to try,” she says, “if you would but give it me.”

  He plucks a dark piece the size of his hand from the basket. It drips great spots of blood on the ground. The sight would have revolted her a few weeks ago, but now she stretches to get it. James raises it higher, out of her reach. Her face reddens in vexation at this child’s game, yet she feels a tingling excitement. It reminds her of the early days of Joseph’s courtship—how pretty and warm she felt in his presence, how exquisitely alive.