Sometimes she thinks about Bess Parker. She wonders what became of her poor son. Has he been ill-treated by his master? Has he been sold not just once, but many times? How has he fared without his mother to care for him? How has Bess fared without him? She thinks about love and all she has been taught—that love belongs first to God, that mortal love is a poor imitation of divine love. That too much affection for her children and husband is sinful and dangerous because it might diminish her love for the Lord. Yet now it seems to her that love is a mystery that takes its own forms. Love goes where it will, and the attempt to redirect it actually corrupts it.
Few of the Indians speak English to her, except for James and Alawa. Weetamoo plainly understands Mary, and has demonstrated that she can speak English. Yet she rarely does, seeming to think it beneath her. Mary knows she must learn to understand the Indian language. But she finds it difficult and learns the words slowly, picking them up here and there, like scraps of food or discarded crumbs.
She asks James for his help. When Weetamoo has no chores for her, he teaches her useful words and instructs her in the complexity of Indian languages. He tells her that there are many different tongues spoken in the camp. “Every tribe has its own tongue,” he says. “They are connected like the web of a great spider. Yet each is distinct.”
She tries to make sense of this. It would explain why some of the Indians seem suspicious of others. Why they don’t seem to understand one another plainly. Why they gather in little knots of people and cast sideways glances at one another. Perhaps this is the reason it has been so difficult for her to learn the words.
“Our tongues are not like the English tongue,” he says. “English words are like small beads on a string. Our words are like relationships—some are very long and elaborate because that is the nature of some associations.” He smiles and startles her by reaching across his knees and circling her wrist with his fingers. Her skin shivers. “A band that circles a woman’s wrist—to the English it is a bracelet—but a Nipmuc sees it as a connection. So we call it petehennitchab, which means ‘that which the hand remains put into.’ So you see, the word explains what the hand does. We know things have no meaning if they are severed from their purposes.”
She feels her face slowly redden under his gaze. His fingers still encircle her wrist. She tries to think about what he said. The idea is so strange, and her mind is so oddly misty and warm, that she can make no sense of it.
When he takes away his hand, she feels unexpectedly bereft.
• • •
When Mary finishes the shirt for Philip’s papoose and presents it to him, he gives her a shilling. It is the first sign that her fortunes have changed. A few days later, Philip asks her to make a cap for his boy, and soon other Indians bring cloth and food to her and ask her to make clothes. She begins doing a steady business in trade. For the first time since her capture, Mary has food enough to satisfy her.
One morning there is a general tumult in the camp. At first Mary thinks they are preparing to move again. Yet after she has swept out the wetu and piled the sleeping skins on the platforms, Weetamoo dismisses her. Mary walks through the camp, looking for a quiet place to sew. The women, who are usually occupied with weaving mats or scraping hides, are instead clustered in small groups, engaged in animated conversation. In the evening there is drumming and dancing around a great fire in the center of the camp. Drawn to the ceremony, Mary sits beneath the overhang of a large boulder and watches the warriors dance. Quinnapin, his face painted in red and black swirls and his linen shirt unlaced to reveal his chest, dances until dawn.
When the sun rises again over the low hills in the east, Mary learns that the warriors have left for battle. It strikes her as strange and foolish that they weary themselves by dancing all night before a fight. So she is not surprised when, all the next day, men trickle back into camp, their glances wary and exhausted. A few are leading captured sheep and horses. Alawa tells Mary that they attacked the town of Northampton, where the English had set a trap for them inside the palisade. Many Indians were killed and many more wounded. The Narragansett sachem, Canonchet, was captured and beheaded by Mohegan warriors allied with the English.
That night the warriors blacken their bodies and form a circle around the fire. As the moon rises, they begin a slow, somber dance. The light flickers on their bent heads and blackened shoulders, over the shining patches of wet skin where the paint has sluiced away. Mary feels caught in the net of their sorrow. She thinks of Sarah lying alone in the cold ground. She thinks of Elizabeth sprawled dead in the snow. She begins to weep.
She is about to go back to the wetu when Weetamoo steps into the circle of dancers. She wears a coat of coarse cloth covered all over with belts of wampum. From her elbows to her hands, her arms are encased in metal and hide bracelets, and around her neck she has hung strands of shells and wood and stones. Bright stones dangle from her ears, catching the light and winking it back. She wears white shoes and fine red stockings. Her face is painted red and she has dusted her hair with red powder. Slowly she begins to dance.
Other women emerge from the shadows to join her, forming an outer circle around the men. The two circles move in opposite directions, like two great revolving wheels. Mary’s gaze is fixed on Weetamoo, who, though moving with the circle of women, seems somehow to be the center of it all. Mary can neither explain nor understand this marvel.
The women begin to wail, softly at first and then louder and louder, throwing their heads back and crying to the sky. “Naananto, Canonchet,” they chant, over and over. Mary nearly joins them. She longs to cry her daughter’s and sister’s names into the blind night. She wants the fire to dance on her skin. She yearns to be swept into the double circle of mourning. Yet she does not move. Her bones feel shackled to the bedrock beneath her feet, her heart bolted as if in a box of iron.
Then she sees James. He wears only leggings and a loincloth. His hair is braided and adorned with three black feathers at his crown. His skin shines in the firelight. A necklace of shells swings back and forth across his chest. He lifts his knees high as he whirls and dances, his feet beating the ground in time to the drum.
She is spellbound. She cannot withdraw her gaze. Her heart begins to beat with the drum. She feels the dancers’ sorrow enter her bones, as her own sorrow dissolves. She feels their wildness in her heart, and her feet begin to move on the earth.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The Indians mourn for three nights, blackening their faces and dancing and crying out the dead sachem’s name. Quinnapin especially seems broken by this news. Alawa tells Mary that Canonchet was his cousin, and Mary’s heart goes out to him, though she knows she ought to rejoice at the English victory.
The horses captured in the failed raid are picketed near Weetamoo’s wetu. Mary hears them stamping and huffing in the night. A few days after the mourning ceremonies, two warriors come to the wetu and Mary is surprised to find she can understand them as they speak to Weetamoo. They ask if she will allow them to take the horses west into the hills to Albany and trade them for gunpowder, but she dismisses them with a wave of her hand.
Mary steps outside. The horses—a big chestnut gelding and two gray mares—whinny softly when she approaches. She is surprised the Indians have not already killed them for food. She rubs the flank of one of the mares, wishing she had some grass to offer. The mare reminds her of a horse her father bought when she was a young child—a mare so gentle Mary could safely ride alone on her back. She thinks about the warriors who want to go to Albany. She wonders if they will find a way to go without Weetamoo’s permission.
She forms a plan, and goes in search of James. It is near dark when she finds him standing on a low bluff overlooking the river. The wind sings in the tops of the pines and the moon is rising over the low hills on the far shore, turning the river to silver. She approaches in what she believes is complete silence, for she has learned how to place her mocca
sin-clad feet so they make almost no sound. Yet before she reaches him, James turns, plainly having heard her.
He smiles and holds out his hand. His look is open, unabashedly happy to see her. She feels an electric ripple at the base of her spine. “I have not seen you for some time. I wondered if you had gone.”
“Gone?” She does not give him her hand. “Where would I go?”
He shrugs. “You might have been sold and taken to some other camp. Or you might have left to find your way back to your home.”
She laughs. “I am not so foolish. I have been making myself useful, as you suggested. I have been sewing shirts.” She moves closer.
“So I have heard. You are becoming Indian.”
He has made this accusation before and usually it irritates her. But this time, she is surprised to feel a flush of satisfaction. She wonders suddenly if she has been trying to become more Indian all along. Her reaction is disturbing. She pushes it away. “I need a favor of you.”
“A favor.”
A slow heat climbs her neck. “Are we not friends?” she says carefully. “And fellow Christians?” She folds her hands in front of her waist, a sign of humility. “You know that Christians are commanded to help each other in times of trial.”
He grunts softly. “What help?”
“I have heard that some of Weetamoo’s warriors are planning an expedition west to the town of Albany.”
“Who told you this?”
She shakes her head, dismissing his question. “I would like to make an arrangement. I want you to take me to Albany and trade me to the English. I will give you half my price.”
“To Albany?” His face is partly in shadow, so she cannot read his expression, but his laugh is unmistakable. “Only an Indian would have the wit to negotiate her own barter so cunningly.”
Her face burns. “I wish only to gain my freedom.”
“What, you have no freedom here?” There is something unusually sharp in his tone. “Think on it. When you were among the English, were you ever allowed to roam the village at will? Did you have time of your own in which to start your own enterprise? Were you not watched constantly? Did you not labor for your husband from waking until sleeping?”
She cannot answer him, for he is uttering the very thoughts she has entertained for weeks now. “I have proposed a bargain to you,” she says, the words like cold stones in her mouth. “You have not yet answered it.”
He looks away, toward the rising moon. “More,” he says after a time. “Half is not enough.”
She is stunned. “I thought you a friend.”
He makes a slight motion with his hand—a flexing of his fist. “Friend or no, you are not likely to fetch a high price. Surely you know that.” He takes a step toward her. “You have lived with Indians,” he says softly. “The English will never trust your claims of virtue.”
She can say nothing. His words are cruel. But she cannot deny their truth.
“Abandon your dreams of returning,” he says. “This is your home now. Your lot is cast with us.”
She draws up her shoulders, stiffening them as if to protect her neck from a blow. “So you will not help me?”
She feels his gaze drawing her in, though neither of them moves. “I am helping you,” he says. “I am trying to persuade you to surrender to your new situation. There is much happiness to be found in acceptance.” He is silent for a moment. “And it is no small thing to slip from Weetamoo’s grasp.”
She feels a shiver along her spine, as if James had just dropped a handful of snow inside her dress. She turns and walks quickly back up the hill toward the camp.
• • •
Mary’s plan of escape comes to nothing, for a few days later they break camp, cross back over the river, and march north. When they stop walking, Mary takes out her sewing.
She has never considered herself more than a clumsy seamstress, but her work pleases the Indians.
An old man gives her a knife in exchange for a shirt. A woman offers her a pouch of ground corn for stockings. She remembers what Joseph so often said: The Lord’s hand is behind every opportunity. She sometimes misses Joseph, with his vast knowledge of the Bible and all of God’s ways. All the years of her marriage she has taken refuge in him, as behooves a good Puritan wife, though it has not been an easy matter to curb her tongue or submit her nature to his authority. Something in her has always longed to strike out in her own direction, to express her own thoughts, not his. Perhaps, as Joseph himself has suggested, her hair signifies a fiery and disobedient temperament. Yet she always tried to discipline herself and act properly, so as not to shame either of them. So as not to bring down God’s wrath on the whole community.
But thinking of Joseph does not bring the rush of longing that would have been seemly for a woman in Mary’s circumstance. She has stopped petitioning the Lord daily for a safe return to her husband’s protection. What prayers she manages to whisper have been for the welfare of her living children. She does not know if Joseph has remained faithful. She does not even know if he is still alive. If he lives, is he now rebuilding their house in Lancaster? Is he plowing the west field? There is a heavy stone in her stomach, as if an unborn child died there and lies waiting for a sad deliverance from the womb that has become its crypt.
• • •
The children begin dying. The youngest go first. Even Weetamoo’s own papoose is wasting away. Mary frets about Joss and Marie. Are they finding enough food to stay alive? Are they suffering from fevers or dysentery? She begs the Lord to give them strength, to keep them well. She reads psalms in secret, searching for solace, but there is none to be had. Death walks through the camp like a sachem, taking one here and one there, at his whim.
Daily, the keening of women fills the camp. The sound is dreadful, like the howling of wolves. It makes Mary feel the same terror in her own throat. Her hearing has sharpened during her time in the wilderness. She has grown more aware of small noises and distant sounds. The waves of grief in the women’s voices remind her of her own wild sorrow at Sarah’s death, which is nearly as fresh now as the day her daughter died, though it is two months past.
They begin moving more often. Sometimes they walk for hours before they stop to set up camp. Then they are on the trail again early the next morning. Sometimes they build wetus and stay for several days. Mary does not know why they move or who decides. There seems to be no pattern to how long they will remain in one place and when they will move on.
The torturous job of rolling up the mats tears the skin of Mary’s fingers and palms. She rolls and rolls, leaving coins of blood on the reeds. Yet the pain is nothing compared to the terrible fainting pains in her stomach. In spite of her sewing enterprise, she is starving. They are all starving.
The days grow longer and the sun is not so distant. The ground begins to thaw. Chickadees bounce through the air in front of her. One day, as they walk beside a river, Mary hears the buzzing trill of blackbirds. Then, from a small tree, she hears a familiar sound and recognizes it as the call of a sparrow. Despite her hunger pangs, her heart lifts and she is suddenly overwhelmed by the radiance of sunlight and the sweetness of birdsong. A great peace settles over her.
Until now, she has never observed anything but disorder and malevolence in the wilderness. Like her mother and father before her, she has always believed it is a place that harbors evil and danger. For the first time, she finds herself enthralled by its beauty. She senses something mysterious and holy lurking behind the apparent chaos of the forest.
Mary begins having peculiar, unsettling thoughts. She wonders if it is a delirium caused by the constant walking. If Joseph were here, he would likely tell her that God is testing her faithfulness. If so, she has already failed His test. James is right—she has grown accustomed to Indian ways. Though it is a hard life, without the comforts of civilization, there is a beauty in the Indians’ wildness, a
nd freedom in their ways that allows her to forge her own course. She has unexpectedly discovered an enterprising spirit within her nature. In exchanging her needlework for food and shelter, she has established a small place of usefulness and value within their society.
She begins to devise a plan to barter her own children back to her care. She imagines Joss and Marie living with her in a wetu of her own making. She pictures the three of them well fed and rested, going about their simple duties among a cluster of wetus. All of them at a circle fire, joining in the dance. She imagines sitting with Marie, their heads bent toward each other as they weave baskets side by side. She will tell Marie those secret things mothers must tell their daughters: that blood signifies both life and death, that men are sometimes cunning, that a woman’s power lies in her composure.
The days spent on the trail are harrowing. Mary’s basket is sometimes so heavy it rubs her back raw. The carrying strap cuts deeply into her forehead, raising two long welts that score her skin and sometimes bleed in rivulets down her forehead and face. She fears they will become scars to disfigure her face. But all she can do is apply mud poultices when each day’s trek is done.
One morning, when Weetamoo points to the basket, some perversity makes Mary refuse to lift it. “It is too heavy,” she says, signaling with her hands, pressing down on the top of her head and shoulders to show that she can no longer bear so great a weight.
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