Flight of the Sparrow

by Amy Belding Brown

  As she stands, she sees someone moving through the trees to her right. She holds her breath and does not move, becoming one with the rock and the surrounding trees. There are two of them—warriors acting as sentries, watching the encampment through the night. They speak in low voices. She understands only a few words, but they alarm her, for they tell her that Philip is on the verge of surrendering, that the English soldiers will show no mercy. They expect all the men in the camp will be slain and the women will be violated.

  Mary quickly makes her way back to the wetu. She is shaking, but not with cold. She recalls Elizabeth’s warning the night before her death—it is as if her sister sits beside her still, and she can hear her voice: “Before they kill the women, they defile them.” Elizabeth had been talking about Indians. Mary remembers her sick feeling at the words, her long-standing dread of capture, of how certain she had been that she would be assaulted and defiled. She remembers how she vowed that she would rather be slain than captured by Indians. Yet she has been captured, but she has not been assaulted. Despite her days of hunger and toil, she lives. Even with her lowly status as a slave and a captive, even with Monoco’s carnal interest, no Indian has molested her. Her virtue is intact.

  She pushes through the door flap, finds her way back to her pallet, and slides under the furs, still shivering. Her mind keeps spinning and she cannot sleep. She tries to untangle her conflicting feelings. She hated and feared the Indians, but after three months in their company, she has grown accustomed to their ways. They freely share their food and shelter—something she suspects no English soldier would do with an Indian captive. She has suffered much privation and hardship, but no more than her mistress, whose child has also died, and who has no more to eat than Mary. She has been given no advantages, yet most of the time she has as much freedom and respect as any Indian woman.

  In his sleep, James rolls toward her on his mat. She watches him in the semidarkness, studies the contours of his face in the glow of the fire’s embers. She thinks of his many acts of kindness—from cutting the rope from her neck, to protecting her from Weetamoo’s wrath. She wonders why he chose to protect her. She can only conclude that it is God’s doing, that the Lord has sent him to be her rescuer and friend.

  Still shivering, she turns restlessly, trying to find a comfortable position.

  “You are shaking.” His voice startles her; she had believed he was asleep. Instead, he moves toward her. “Come.” He wraps an arm around the skins that enclose her and pulls her toward him. She tries to murmur a protest, but it comes out as no more than a sigh. He draws back the bearskin and rolls her onto her side so that she is facing away and he presses himself to her, his chest against her back, his thighs along the backs of her legs, his shins touching her calves. Then he pulls another bearskin over both of them.

  She knows it is wicked to lie there, that letting him warm her can lead too easily to wantonness and sin, that she should rise at once and flee. But his body is warm and strong and she is freezing. And so she lies, absorbing his warmth until her shivering stops.

  “It is your thoughts that torment you,” James says quietly. “You must share them, else they will give you no peace.”

  Tears spring to her eyes. “With you?” she whispers.

  He is silent. She feels his heart beat against her spine. After a moment, he asks, “Am I not as good a friend as you have in these troubled times?”

  She knows in that moment that he is as good a friend as she has ever had in her life. She begins to tell him, speaking into the darkness thoughts she has never imagined putting into words. It is a confession unlike any she has ever made—cleansing and thorough and nakedly honest. She tells him of her confused feelings about Indians, how disturbed she was at first, but how many of their ways now draw her. She tells him how she is attracted to the dances and strange songs, the power of the great drums, even the wildness of their grief. How she admires their stoic patience and generosity. How appealing are the freedoms their women enjoy, how surprised she is by the self-control of their men.

  “You do not understand why you have not been raped.” He states the question that has lain in her mind for weeks, states it so simply and straightforwardly that for a moment she wonders if she said the words herself. No one in her memory has ever been so direct about sexual matters. She cannot think of how to form a reply.

  “Is that not so?” She feels his breath warm the back of her neck. His fingertips brush her arm as lightly as a butterfly’s wing. “Have you not expected your virtue to be taken by a heathen?” As he says the last word, there is amusement in his voice, though she detects no derision. He is so close she can smell his breath, a sweet pungent scent like sassafras.

  She shrugs, a movement intended to relieve the tension in her neck and shoulders, as much as to acknowledge his point.

  “Indian men do not rape their captives,” he says. “They adopt them as wives and daughters.”

  “Am I to be adopted then?” she asks, her voice a whisper. She welcomes the heat radiating from his skin, though she is warm now and knows she ought to move away.

  He laughs gently. “I think you would like that,” he says. “But I believe Philip has other plans.”

  She thinks of poor Ann Joslin, pictures her brutal death. “Do you think he will have me killed?” Her mouth is dry. She can barely speak.

  “No, no.” His hand, which hovers just above her arm, takes hers. His skin is warm, his fingers sure and strong. “No one will do you any harm. Have you not seen how I protect you?”

  She does not pull her fingers from his. They curl into the warmth of his palm. “I have seen it,” she whispers. “What I do not know is why.”

  He is silent for a long time. She can hear her heart beat in her ears. She wonders if he is going to confess his feelings for her. But when he finally speaks, he says, “Once, a few years after he baptized me, Mr. Eliot told me a secret. He said that God always weeps when men and women are cruel—to each other, to animals. To the earth itself. He said that Christ’s kingdom will only come when we learn to be deeply kind. He told me to remember that while we draw breath, there will always be some way we can show kindness.”

  She does not know what to say. These are not the words she expected. Yet they move her, as if she has just witnessed a strange miracle.

  “What will become of me?” she asks, after a time.

  “Philip will redeem you to the English,” James says. “When he is ready.”

  Her mind races. What of us? she thinks suddenly. What will become of this strange, unseemly friendship between an English wife and an Indian? No civilized Englishman or -woman will ever accept it. Yet she has come to a place in her heart where she feels she cannot live without it.

  She is silent for so long that she hears James’s breathing lengthen and knows he has slipped back into sleep, still holding her hand.

  • • •

  She wakes on her side, in the same coiled position in which she fell asleep. James no longer lies behind her. She sits up. The youth is moaning softly in his sleep, but James is not in the wetu.

  She feels a wave of shame as she recalls what transpired in the middle of the night. Though there was no carnal act between them, the intimacy of her conversation with James distresses her. Mary cannot recall even one exchange with Joseph in which she so nakedly revealed her thoughts.

  She pushes off the bearskin and gets to her feet. She is bending over the youth, trying to determine if his fever has returned, when the door flap opens and James steps into the wetu.

  “You must go,” he says before she has a chance to speak. “Weetamoo is looking for you. They say she believes you have run off.”

  “Run off?” Mary presses a hand to her forehead. “Where would I run to?”

  He shrugs. “I do not know her thinking. But you must return to her wetu at once. She cannot find you here.”

  She unders
tands what he has not said: that it will go badly not only for her but also for him if Weetamoo believes he is involved in her disappearance.

  “I came here for help.” She gestures to the youth. “The boy was dying. An old woman advised me to come here.”

  “I know why you came.” His gaze does not leave her face. As if he has spoken what neither of them would ever say aloud: The youth was not the true reason. “You must go. Now.”

  Her eyes fill instantly and unaccountably with tears, as if he has opened the ground of her heart and set free a hidden spring. She nods and hurries to the door. Her forearm brushes his as she passes. She looks up, into his face. “May I come tomorrow to see how the youth fares?”

  “Of course. If Weetamoo consents.” He lifts the flap and she steps out into the bright morning.

  • • •

  She is not free to visit James’s wetu for two days—such is the fickleness of Weetamoo’s demands. Her release comes when a warrior asks her to knit a pair of stockings to fit him. She looks for permission to Weetamoo, who signals that Mary might do as she wishes, that she may once again come and go as she pleases. It occurs to Mary that perhaps they are equally weary of each other’s presence.

  Mary goes at once to James’s wetu and is pleased to find that the youth has come out of his stupor and is recovering. She talks with him for a while, cautioning him to obey James in all things, reminding him that he would be dead if James had not taken him in.

  “He may be dead yet,” James says, “for I have no more food. Nor muskets or arrows to hunt with.”

  The youth assures her he is grateful, but there is something sullen in the curl of his mouth that she does not like. She leaves the wetu, determined to scrounge food for James and the youth. Yet she is able to find only two groundnuts and a scrap of bread so dry it crumbles to dust at her touch. As she peels a strip of soft bark from a chestnut tree with the intention of making a stew of the bark and nuts, Alawa finds her and tells her that Weetamoo wants her to return to the wetu at once and mend a shirt.

  The next morning, as Mary walks through the camp, she overhears a rumor that the English youth has escaped. She hurries along the path and finds James smoking a pipe outside his wetu. He confirms that the youth is gone, that he left in the middle of the night. “He has returned your kindness—and mine—with cowardly betrayal,” he tells Mary. “No one seems to care for kindness anymore. Perhaps we are well rid of him. He is one less mouth to feed, one less body to take up space in a wetu.”

  “No!” She is unable to agree with this dark vision of the world. “Kindness redeems our hearts, no matter whether we are thanked for it.”

  He draws on his pipe, thoughtfully studying her face. Smoke drifts in gray curls from the bowl.

  Finally, he takes the pipe from his mouth and rests it in his palm. “So I believed in my youth. But sorrow has come with the English and infested our lands. We must learn new truths or die.” He gazes past Mary at the budding trees, as if he can see through their branches into the future.

  • • •

  In the days that follow, Mary thinks about James almost constantly, recalling every encounter, from the moment he cut the rope from her neck, to the night they lay side by side in his wetu. She ponders the unsettling attraction between them, the way he listens so closely to her, the respect he shows her even though she is a woman and a slave.

  Every day, the air is sweeter with the earth’s perfume. There are buds on the trees, and small yellow and white flowers bloom here and there in the sunlight. Sparrows and warblers sing hidden in the forest. A mountain rises not far away, the trees on it tinged with red, as if dark blood flows through the naked branches. Mary stands watching, drawing in great draughts of air. She is struck by the realization that the wilderness has become a place of beauty to her. A place that is no longer filled only with danger, but also with mystery and peace.

  • • •

  The next day they pack up and begin to march again, through thickets and barren places, past swamps and over rocks. They are forced to stop often, for the streams are in spring flood and difficult to ford. They make camp and remain for a few days on the bank of a wide river. It runs fast and hard, throwing up white feathers of foam as it tumbles over rocks. When Mary is sent to fetch water, she stands on the bank entranced, watching the river dance in the sunlight until she hears Weetamoo call.

  On the second afternoon of the new encampment, warriors return from a hunt with two deer and a moose. The people feast all night. Yet only a few young men dance around the fire. Mary does not see James there, nor has she seen him since the morning after the youth’s escape. She misses him.

  They wade across the river the next morning, through water so cold it numbs Mary’s feet and legs. The force of the current makes her reel, and it takes a fierce effort to push through the water. With each step she is afraid she will fall. She hears the sound of laughter and looks up to see Alawa and two other women standing on the bank laughing at her. She feels a quick rush of anger, but it fades as she realizes how foolish she must look swaying through the water like a drunken woman. She smiles back at them, but as she reaches the far side, her foot slips on a stone and she crashes to her knees. Her legs scramble and splash in the water, whipping up a froth of skirt and river; her hands claw the mud at the water’s edge. Yet, as she manages to grasp a nearby sapling and pull herself up the sloping bank to a flat place at the top, she too is laughing. Alawa helps her to her feet and they start walking again.

  After they cross the river, a contagious energy passes among the people and a strange lightness of heart comes over Mary. She listens to the women’s chatter as they walk and learns that they will soon come to a great gathering place they call Wachusett. Philip and some of his warriors have gone ahead and are waiting for them.

  They make camp again and Mary pours herself into doing the tasks Weetamoo commands: fetching water, gathering firewood, unrolling the sleeping mats and placing them in the lean-to shelter Alawa has erected. But she is soon left idle, and slips away.

  She walks aimlessly. The stench of sickness is everywhere. People sprawl on the bare ground, groaning in hunger. Children cry piteously, clutching their stomachs. The few dogs that have not been eaten slink at the edges of the camp, seeking food and finding none. Mary keeps walking, trying to outpace her hunger.

  She climbs a low ridge that opens onto a stone outcropping overlooking the camp. Low clouds the color of dung hang in the west. The trees are budding. She thinks of her kitchen garden in its spring growth. The onions and artichokes will come up on their own, but this year there will be no leeks or melons, no carrots or cabbages, for she is doubtful that Joseph—if he lives—has taken care to plant them. The lavender, if it blooms, will perfume no rooms or bedclothes. She idly fingers the stray flakes of dried lavender that have lain in her pocket all winter. Their fragrance is no longer strong enough to leave a scent on her fingers.

  She remembers last spring, when Marie helped her care for the kitchen garden. How diligent the girl had been, how attentive to her weeding, determined to root out every threat to the tender shoots. Mary had never contemplated before how diligently Marie attended to the details of her chores, how gentle she was in her character. Tears sting the corners of her eyes, and she quickly brushes them away.

  She is struck by her strange situation. Though she is a captive, she experiences a remarkable liberty of movement. She recalls the many times in Lancaster she wanted to walk out the door and across the fields alone. How she had longed for the freedom to go where she wished—when she wished—free from neighbors’ reproving looks and her sisters’ chastening tongues. Yet she had rarely strayed beyond the yard by herself except the few times she visited Bess Parker. She had acted the part of the captive, though she was neither shackled nor restrained.

  She thinks daily about Joss and Marie, prays they are well, and wonders if they have been rescued or ransomed
back to civilization. She knows that Indians like to capture and adopt children from other tribes to replace their own dead children. Sometimes the children never return to their homes. Even when offered liberty, they choose to stay with their new families. She has also heard rumors that Indians sometimes sell children to papists in the French colony of Canada.

  “Better that they die than forfeit their souls to Rome.” She whispers the sentiment she heard Joseph express so many times. Yet something lurches at the base of her spine even as the words slip past her lips. The truth is that she desires only that her children live. Even if their fate is to be papists or Indians, she wants them alive.

  Is she therefore willing to give their souls over to the Devil? Is she the most wicked of mothers? She forgets the terrible pangs in her belly and tries to summon some Christian remorse, using the most punishing reproaches she can think of. But she cannot wring a proper guilt from her heart. If she wants to repent of anything, it is of the harsh methods she used in raising her children. She recalls the times she struck Marie for impertinence, remembers the sturdy birch switch used to thrash Joss when sloth got the better of the boy. She punished her children with the dutiful regularity of all Puritan mothers, yet she now regrets every harsh word. What she once believed necessary now seems to her needlessly cruel. She often sees Indian mothers laugh with their children and indulge their childish antics. She knows she ought to righteously condemn them, but the truth is she longs only to imitate them. What harm could come if the English treat their children with kindness and mercy?

  The scent of a cook fire reaches her on tendrils of smoke. In the camp below, women are fetching water from the river. She knows that Weetamoo will be vexed if she is not at hand. She makes her way down the hill into the camp.

  It begins to rain; fat drops fall on her head and neck and shoulders. She runs for Weetamoo’s shelter and slides inside. It is dry and hot from smoke and close-packed bodies. She creeps to the far wall, takes out her sewing and waits for Weetamoo to give her orders. But Weetamoo is absorbed in a conversation with Alawa. After a while Mary dozes off.