Flight of the Sparrow

by Amy Belding Brown

  James finally stops teasing her and hands her the piece of liver, which Mary quickly spits on a stick and sets at the edge of the fire to roast. She is near fainting as the sweet odor fills her nostrils. As she closes her eyes for a moment to savor it, a girl runs up and snatches it out of the fire. Mary screams and grabs it, but the girl doesn’t let go, and the liver rips in two chunks. The girl runs off and Mary stands holding the torn piece in both hands. For an instant, she wonders if she should finish roasting it, then realizes she will likely lose what’s left if she does. She eats the half-raw liver like an animal. Blood runs from the sides of her mouth and dribbles onto her apron. Her mouth and chin are smeared with grease and blood. She is so absorbed in eating, she doesn’t see James return. When she finally looks up, he is standing a few feet away, watching her. He smiles.

  “’Tis as I thought,” he says. “You have become Indian.”

  Mary feels a wave of shame. “Nay,” she says, shaking her head and wiping her hands vigorously on her apron. “I am an Englishwoman still.”

  His smile disappears and he bends to speak into her ear. “Do not fear this,” he says. “’Tis your path to safety. You are strong and clever. If you can bring yourself to discard some of your English notions, you will flourish. I have no doubt.”

  Mary’s face burns, even as she walks away from him, for she feels a strange mixture of disgrace and arousal. Why is it that she experiences such tremors in his presence? The sort of tremors that should be reserved only for her husband.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  She is hungry all the time. She sleeps hungry and wakes hungry. Whenever Mary tends the fire, she scoops some of the pot’s contents into her mouth when no one is looking. She does not want to think about what swims there. More than once she has seen Weetamoo drop a fresh-killed squirrel into the pot without skinning it or removing its head. She recognizes eyeballs, gray lumps of intestines, long tendons strung with bits of flesh, even scraps of fur. Only a few weeks ago she would not have brought such food to her lips, thinking it too vile even to throw to the pigs.

  Before her capture, she was never without food when she wanted it. Now food is dispensed to her, bit by bit, by her enemies. She has only enough to keep her alive. She longs for a spoonful of cold porridge, or a scrap of stale bread. On the trail, thoughts of rich food invade her mind like whispers of the Devil himself. When she sleeps, she dreams of tables laden with sausages and beef and ham swimming in thick gravy. She dreams of sweet, hot grease running down her throat, of the sharp tang of newly cut cheese on her tongue, of loaves of bread torn open, exposing soft insides the color of winter grass.

  She is aware that her suffering is no greater than anyone’s in the camp. They are all hungry, all on the verge of starvation. She knows others also dream of food, for she hears them mutter weyaus—the word for meat—in their sleep. Food is so scarce that they smile and laugh when they find a root poking from the ground. Mary notices that whatever food is available, the men and women usually share with everyone, even their captives. She finds this strange, for she has always thought it a law of nature that a hungry man or woman will hoard food in a starving time. It strikes her that sometimes the Indians act like Christians, though few have been baptized. This is a great puzzle, one that she cannot work out, though she ponders it often as she sits sewing.

  • • •

  She encounters James again one afternoon in the woods as she collects sticks for Weetamoo’s fire. She turns away without speaking, because she is still alarmed by her sinful arousal during their last encounter. But he takes her hand and slides something into her palm. She looks down and sees a small scrap of dried meat. In her surprise, she nearly drops it.

  “Eat now,” he says. “Before someone takes it from you.” When he smiles, she knows he witnessed the corn and liver stolen from her. She blushes and pops the piece into her mouth. It is the size of her thumbnail and as tough as a stone, yet her spittle pools around it and slowly it softens between her teeth. She chews and swallows.

  “Thank you,” she says. “You are very kind.” Her heart is beating too fast. She tries to meet his gaze, but finds it impossible. “I should go now.”

  He does not move.

  There is a strange prickling sensation in the skin of her face. She tries again. “Weetamoo is a hard mistress. She will not think kindly on me if she wants me and I am not at hand.”

  “You should be grateful to Weetamoo. She has shown you great charity.”

  Mary thinks of the times Weetamoo kicked her awake, of her vicious blows, her relentless demands. “She has been pitiless and cruel. I have seen no charity.”

  James shakes his head. “She spared you Monoco’s lust.” He raises his right hand to adjust the blanket on his shoulder. She notices his fine, long fingers, the way they dance over the fabric. “He would have taken you for a wife, had she allowed it,” he says.

  “Wife?” She has lost the thread of their conversation. She looks up at him blankly.

  “Monoco admires your hair. He wishes to marry you. Did you not know?”

  She stiffens, as if an icy chain has encircled her neck. “I am married. I cannot be wife to anyone but my own husband.” James says nothing, but stares at her as if her words make no sense. Another thought suddenly strikes her. For weeks she has been worried that Joseph has not come to rescue her. Has he been prevented from coming? Have Indians ambushed and killed him? Perhaps she is not married any longer.

  “Is it—?” She can barely get the words out. “Have you word of my husband? Has some evil befallen him?”

  James shrugs but there is something guarded in his gaze.

  “Has he not tried to rescue me and our children?” Her voice is far more plaintive than she intends. She presses her hand to her mouth.

  “I have not heard that news.” He steps toward her.

  “But you have heard something.”

  He looks briefly at the ground and then back at her. Directly into her eyes. “There are stories.”

  “Tell me what you know,” she says. “Please.”

  Again he looks away, this time into the surrounding trees. “Some say”—he pauses—“they say that, believing you dead, he has taken another wife.”

  “No,” she whispers. “It cannot be so.”

  “’Tis a story only.”

  She is silent for a moment, trying to absorb this. “Even if it be true,” she says firmly, “I would never consent to union with an Indian.”

  “It is not a matter of consent,” James says. “You are a captive here. Your approval is not required. You will be bought and sold at the pleasure of your mistress.”

  Bought and sold. Mary thinks of Bess Parker’s babe and feels a chill that is not caused by the wind. “My mistress?” she says weakly. “Would not my master be the one to sell me?”

  “You do not understand. You belong to Weetamoo. She is more powerful than Quinnapin. He gave you to her as tribute.”

  She frowns. “I warrant you speak nonsense. Surely Weetamoo derives what power she has from her husband.”

  He shakes his head solemnly. “She is the sachem of all the Pocasset people. She leads more warriors than Quinnapin. She is more respected. She holds more authority.” He leans close to her, as if the intensity of his gaze might help her grasp the river of information he pours over her. “Her sister is married to Metacomet—the Wampanoag sachem the English call Philip. Weetamoo was once wife of his older brother, Wamsutta, who was sachem before Philip. When he was poisoned by the English in Plymouth, she wed again, but soon left him because her new husband sided with the English. Then she married Quinnapin because he sought the alliance, though he already has two wives.”

  Mary’s mind spins as she tries to absorb all James is telling her. Weetamoo has had many husbands. She discarded them when they did not please her. It is preposterous. She wonders if James is trying to trick her. It is unseemly
—and frightening—for a woman to have such power over men. It undermines the order of creation—the order that God put into the world.

  “She will do as she wishes with you,” he continues. “And no one—least of all Quinnapin—will lift a finger to protect you.” He places his hand gently on her arm. “The past is of no use to you, Mary. You must learn to make your way with what you have.”

  He has called her Mary again. She likes the sound of her name on his tongue so much that she almost lets down her guard. She feels the weight of the Bible where it lies in her pocket against her thigh and it occurs to her that she ought to take it out, as a defense against her disconcerting feelings. She wishes she could declare that she has not changed, that the past has made her who she is, that it gives her succor and hope. But she says nothing, for the thoughts that form in her mind refuse to move to her tongue.

  “You should consider taking a new name,” he says. “To signify your new condition.”

  “New name?” She suspects he is teasing her. But why?

  “Chikohtqua,” he says. “Your new name should be Chikohtqua. Burning Woman.”

  The name instantly conjures the image of her dead sister as she was consumed in flames. Mary feels a bubble of nausea as she shakes off his hand and hurries away. Yet she cannot stop thinking of James’s words and the name he bestowed on her. She tries to repeat the strange syllables but they twist on her tongue.

  Burning Woman. Why does James think such a name would suit her? Does he mean it as an omen? Or a strange blessing? And what of Joseph? Is it possible that her husband thinks she is dead? Would he not strive by all means possible to assure himself of her safety? And the safety of their children?

  She goes deeper into the woods, grateful for the shadows there. She has come to welcome the way the trees sift the light and soften the wilderness colors. There are still patches of snow on the ground but the earth is no longer hard as stone beneath her moccasins.

  She recalls a conversation she had with Joseph not long after Joss was born. It was late summer and a sultry breeze had drawn her outside just as Joseph came up from the barn. They had sat on the bench by the front door for a time, slapping away flies. A wistful sadness overcame her as she thought of her mother. When Joseph remarked on her melancholy expression, Mary told him of how, as a child, she often sat with her mother on the door stoop at the end of a summer day while they talked of pleasant things.

  Joseph looked at her thoughtfully. “Why has your father not remarried, I wonder? Your mother died many years ago and yet he has no wife.”

  She gaped at him in surprise. “Why should he remarry? My sister Hannah keeps his house well.”

  “It is not customary—or healthy—for a man to stay single so long.” Joseph gazed at the low hills in the west, apparently unaware of her surprise. “Perhaps he still mourns her.”

  “I’m sure he does,” Mary said, and immediately wished she had not spoken. She knew Joseph regarded mourning as a worldly sin—the sign of a man unable to submit himself to God’s will. “My mother was a good woman. There are not many to match her in piety.”

  He nodded slowly but still did not look at her. “There are many women here in Lancaster who would be grateful for a husband who will provide well for them. And your father is the most prosperous man in town—by my thinking he ought to think beyond his own wants.”

  There it was—and not for the first time in their marriage—the suggestion that Mary’s father was not sufficiently generous with his wealth. Although Joseph never said it, she had long suspected that his real grievance was that her father had not given more to them.

  “He must do what his conscience commands,” she said.

  “As must we all,” Joseph said. “Yet I believe Scripture makes it clear that it is a man’s duty to marry.”

  “So, if I should die, you would soon propose to some young maid?” She smiled and nudged him with her elbow, to show that she was jesting. But he was all sobriety that evening, and instead of laughing, he said he would do precisely that. He shifted on the bench to face her.

  “You must know that my conscience would insist that I quickly wed,” he said. “But you must also know that I pray daily that you will live for many years yet, Mary.”

  He had embraced her then, and she had quickly forgotten the conversation. But as she recalls it now, she wonders if his words were a foretelling of what is now unfolding in his life.

  • • •

  She begins to encounter James every day. At first she believes these are chance meetings. Later she suspects he has contrived them by watching her and learning her habits. He often appears suddenly at her side when she carries a pot of water from the river or searches for groundnuts on her hands and knees, poking at the frozen earth with a stick. He asks after her health and advises her on how to please Weetamoo. He shows her how to forage more profitably by searching for withered gray leaves under the snow.

  One afternoon he brings news of Marie and Joss, reporting that they are both well and strong, adapting to Indian life. “As is the wont of children,” he reminds her.

  She is so filled with gratitude that she grasps both his hands in hers. “Thank you, thank you!” she cries. “I am rejoiced to hear this news! It gives me hope that we will someday be reunited.”

  He gives her the gentlest of smiles. It is not until she looks down, away from his gaze, that she notices she is still holding his hands. Yet she does not want to let go.

  Gradually, her discomfort in his presence diminishes. He never shows her the slightest disrespect, nor does he ever make advances. She concludes that her earlier awkwardness and arousal were due to her agitated state after Sarah’s death. It is not his fault that she was unable to master her feelings. She begins to trust him, to feel safe in his presence. She would never before have thought it possible that an Indian man and an Englishwoman could become friends, but this is what seems to be happening.

  He tells her of Hassanamesit, the place where he was born, with its hills and forests and rivers of sweet water leaping with fish. He says that ancient ancestors built stone caves like wombs there, so sacred that only the pauwaus are allowed to enter.

  He tells her he was very young when the English first came to Hassanamesit. “Mr. Eliot and his friend Mr. Gookin,” he says. Mary frowns at the name, knowing she has heard it before. Then she remembers—the man who owned Bess Parker’s lover was a Mr. Gookin. She wonders if it is the same man.

  “We called them wautaconog—coat men,” James is saying, “because they covered their bodies in stiff black cloth, even in seasons when the Nipmuc do not wear skins. They came in summer when we built our wetus and planted corn in the flat fields near the river. After they left, my older brothers mocked them. The pauwaus dreamed of snakes and hawks and smoked many pipes of tobacco to cleanse the air.”

  He tells her that Mr. Eliot came back many times. When James’s father fell ill with a fever and the pauwaus burned herbs and chanted for him, it was not until Mr. Eliot prayed over him that he recovered. His father and Mr. Eliot became friends, and his father decided to send James to live with the English. He tells her that this is a common practice among the Nipmucs, who for generations have sent promising young boys to other tribes to learn their ways and language.

  James describes the years he lived with Mr. Dunstan, the president of the college in Cambridge, where he first saw a printing press. He tells her of his enchantment with the press, and with the magic of words. He says that one day his master found him running his hands over the letters of type, his fingers black with ink. Instead of beating him, Mr. Dunstan said he believed God had shown James his vocation. Later he was apprenticed to a printer, where he set the type for Mr. Eliot’s Indian Bible. Mary has heard of John Eliot’s Bible, for it is famous throughout the Bay Colony as a work of great scholarship, a labor of love in the service of the Lord.

  One day she thinks to ask J
ames if he is married. He looks at the surrounding trees as if he does not know and might find an answer there. “Aye, I was,” he says quietly. “But Nippesse died of a fever two years past. I have two young sons, Ammi and Moses.” He pauses, regards her again with his dark, direct gaze. “They are not here. Children require a mother. My wife’s sister cares for them in the north where they are safe, far from English towns.”

  She feels a flutter in her throat. “Do you not miss them?”

  “Does the grass wither when there is no rain? Does the sparrow long for dawn?”

  She looks down at her lap and pinches a fold in her apron.

  “My brothers and father are here in camp. I am among my people.” His tone is warm, forgiving. She wonders if he is seeking a new wife, but she does not ask.

  One cold, cloudy afternoon when she encounters James as she is searching for groundnuts, she asks how he came to be among Philip’s people. “If you are a friend of Mr. Eliot, why are you now among the warriors who terrorize the English?”

  His eyes harden. “I am not a warrior. I have terrorized no one. Do you not remember who freed you?”

  “I have not forgotten.” She puts her hand to her throat, recalling the weight of the rope against her skin. “Yet you live openly among the rebels,” she prompts. “You dress as an Indian; you go freely among them.”

  “As do you,” he says, smiling. She feels her face flush as his words strike home. She has indeed adopted many Indian ways. She wears a deer-hide dress and moccasins, plaits her hair, and wraps a blanket around herself when she is outside. She smears bear grease on her hands and face to protect her skin from the elements. She has learned to carry heavy baskets and to weave mats and tie them on the wetus.

  “You ask how I have come here,” he says slowly. “I, too, have been a captive. I, too, have felt the rope bind my neck.”

  She looks at him in surprise.

  “It is so.” He points to his neck, and she sees what she has not before: a white scar cutting across his skin. “In August, when I was celebrating a successful hunt with my friends, English soldiers came. They put ropes around our necks and marched us to Boston. They put us on trial for killing settlers in the town of Lancaster. Your town.”