She wakes to a great crash of thunder. Everyone in the shelter is silent; they wait, heads turned toward the sound. But nothing follows. There is no new clap of thunder, no quaking of the earth. Mary finds her mat in the semi-dark and lies down. She falls asleep to the sound of the rain beating all around her like a hundred drums.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
In the morning, they break camp and walk toward a mountain that rises beyond the trees. Alawa tells Mary that it has always been a sign of hope and home for the Nipmuc people, a place to gather beneath the shelter of sacred spirits.
A feeling of dread comes over Mary, as if she is walking to her doom. Worse, she perceives she is not alone in this, but everyone around her is doomed as well; they are gathering not in hope but in desperation.
Everyone is starving. It is plain in the ravaged faces around her, in the exhausted strides of the gaunt warriors, and in the sorrow in the eyes of the old ones. They now eat anything they can fit into their mouths: insects, grubs, worms, tree bark, hides, even bones. One evening Mary is given a shard of boiled horse’s hoof and sits on the ground, sucking and chewing until there is nothing left. A saying is passed around: Hunger masters the strongest warrior once it makes its home among the people.
She begins to hear rumors that Boston has offered payment for the captives. It is said that Philip will surely accept, for he needs more muskets, more bullets and, most of all, more food for his people. Mary feels a weight at the base of her spine, a dullness in her heart. It is as if she has already perished and has no need for rescue.
Late in the afternoon, they come to a half-built stockade. Beyond it, the land rises toward the mountain. Alawa tells Mary that they have finally reached Wachusett. Several wetus have already been erected; their domes make shadows across the greening meadow. Mary is faint from the long march and lack of food, but so is everyone else. She makes no protest when Weetamoo orders her to help build a new wetu.
• • •
Mary does not see James until two days later, when he approaches her as she gathers sticks for the fire.
“I have news,” he says.
She feels a sweet flutter in her chest as she looks up at him. “Is it my children? Are they here in camp?”
He frowns. “I know nothing of them. I am sorry.”
“Nothing?” The sticks seem suddenly too heavy to carry. Mary bends and places them carefully on the ground. Every movement she makes now is arduous. “Pray, then, tell me what news.”
“The sachems are debating your situation. It is said they will soon redeem you to your people.”
“Redeem?” Her eyes cannot seem to focus.
He nods. “It is all but certain. They wait on Philip.”
She tries to absorb this information, but all she is aware of is a dreadful sensation of loss. Finally she manages to speak, her tongue sluggish and thick in her mouth. “Are Joss and Marie to be redeemed with me, then?”
“I have told you already—I know nothing of their fates.” He tilts his head. “Come, Chikohtqua. Is this not the news you have longed for?”
Her cheeks flare. She has no answer for his question that does not bring her shame. Only a few weeks ago, she was begging him to help her escape to Albany. She licks her lips. “I cannot—” She stops. She does not even know what it is she cannot do. Cannot go back to the English without her children? Cannot leave the wilderness? Cannot return to her husband?
James looks at her as if she is a strange being, a creature not of this world. Then his expression softens. “You do not want to leave,” he says quietly. “You have grown too fond of Indian ways.”
She says nothing, though she knows he is expecting her to refute him. It is surely her hunger and fatigue that create this confusion in her heart. From the moment of her capture she has hated the Indians and their savagery. Has she not? Her strange thoughts are like cords binding her chest, cords pulled so tight she cannot breathe.
• • •
That night, Alawa cautions Mary to wash herself with extra care, for she will be brought before the sachems the next day. “Metacomet has called a council,” she says. “The sachems will decide your fate.”
“My fate?” Mary whispers. Fear makes a fist of her heart.
Alawa wrinkles her nose. “You English are always afraid. Is it because your god is so cruel?”
“The Lord is merciful and kind and greatly to be praised.” The words fly automatically from Mary’s mouth, a shield against heresy. Yet she knows, even as she speaks, that they are mere habit. She feels sick and wretched at the thought of going before the council. It is not the sachems she fears. It is the prospect of returning to civilization.
She believes that she has changed too much to ever fit easily into English society again. The wilderness—an abomination to her before her captivity—has now become her home. She can interpret the cries of birds and decipher the shifting patterns of clouds, perceive beauty in the unimproved forest. She has seen vistas that have stolen away her breath. She has learned to live in a new, free way, to be enterprising and to care for herself. She has come to see slavery as a great evil. Though other captives have despaired or died defeated, she has survived through cunning and perseverance.
With effort and discipline, Mary knows she will cope with a return to English life. Yet, even as she has these thoughts, something sad and desperate claws at her heart.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
It is James who comes for Mary the next day, who escorts her up the hill to the longhouse where the sachems are gathered in council. They are all there—Philip, Monoco, Quinnapin, Weetamoo, and the others—seated in a great circle around the fire pit. Many warriors are present, sitting behind the sachems or perched on the long sleeping platforms.
James tells her to sit quietly by the door until she is called forward. When she looks around to see if other captives are present, her heart leaps with joy, for crouched in the shadows is her sister Hannah, whom she has not seen since the day they were captured. Without thinking, she moves toward her, but James clamps his hand down hard on her shoulder and hisses that she must not look at anyone. So Mary sits on her heels, listening to the sachems discuss her fate. Philip says that the English have been humbled and now wish to pay tribute to him. They seek to redeem their captives and want the sachems to name a fair price.
Each sachem speaks in turn, some insisting that what they need most is food, while others ask for liquor and gold. One says that they should all surrender and ask for amnesty, but the warriors shout him down.
Philip raises his hand and everyone is silent. He lights a pipe and passes it around the circle. Each sachem smokes solemnly. It suddenly occurs to Mary that they are engaged in a sort of prayer. When all the sachems have smoked, Philip calls for the captives to be brought before the council, one by one. Mary is first. She moves quickly and sits before him, keeping her head modestly bowed.
“Stand up!” Philip says, gesturing to two of his servants, who quickly pull her to her feet. “This is council. Like English court. You stand.” He turns to James. “You translate.” Then he says something in his native tongue that Mary cannot understand.
James steps into the circle. “Tell the council what your husband will give to redeem you,” he says.
“My husband?” She looks at Philip. “He is alive then?” The sachem’s expression does not change, which she takes as confirmation. She wonders if they have known this all along.
“Mary.” James’s tone is gentle. “How many pounds?”
She stares at him. She is again being sold as a slave. But why are they asking her to name her own price? She has no idea what Joseph will pay to have her back. The very question is unnerving.
“Name a price,” James says quietly. “Your court is waiting.”
She sees something sad and anxious flicker in his eyes. He is serious, then. Perhaps this is the way Indians always negotiate th
eir ransoms, but it seems unnecessarily cruel. He leans closer. “Now!” he whispers.
“Twenty pounds,” she says. The number has popped into her head from nowhere.
A murmur of surprise goes around the circle. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Quinnapin raise his eyebrows and smile at Weetamoo.
She knows at once she has made a mistake. “Mayhap it is too much,” she says. “I beg you will take less.”
Philip laughs. “Twenty pounds,” he says in English. “Good price.” She starts to say that her husband is not wealthy, but he waves her away. “Be gone.” He then turns to James and orders him to write the ransom letter.
• • •
All day the people dance. Mary sits watching from the edge of the circle. Quinnapin wears an English shirt of lace decorated with wampum and coins and shows his strength by never resting, but dancing on and on, after the other men have staggered to the outside of the circle and collapsed. Weetamoo dances, too. Mary watches, entranced by the vigor and grace of her movements.
Suddenly, James steps in front of her. She has not spoken to him since the council. She meets his gaze, and feels a current jump between them, sparking like fire. “Has the council decided?” she asks. “Do you know what is to become of me?” Her voice breaks on the last word.
He shakes his head. “They say Philip is opposed to the bargain. Though I think he will yet be persuaded.”
She bows her head.
“You priced yourself very high,” he says. “Twenty pounds could buy much land. Is your husband a rich man?”
Mary looks at the leaping flames, at the dancers writhing before them. “He is not. I spoke foolishly.”
“You do not wish to be redeemed,” James says softly. “You are afraid to go home.”
“Of course I wish to go home,” she says quickly, angrily. “What other desire could I have?”
He continues to gaze down at her. Then he says something she cannot quite catch over the throb of the drums. Only when he says it again just before he walks away does she realize that he spoke the name he gave her: Chikohtqua—Burning Woman.
Mary’s eyes sting and something hard lodges in her throat. It takes all her resolve not to leap to her feet and run after him. She turns her attention again to the dance circle, where she is surprised to see that Weetamoo is the only sachem still dancing. She whirls around and around in her red English stockings and white moccasins, her cloak of wampum and feathers flying out around her like the wings of a great hawk.
• • •
Mary cannot sleep. All night she rolls on her mat; only her regular thrashing marks the passing of minutes and hours. She hears the call of a screech owl not far from the wetu; in the distance, a lone wolf howls. James is right—she does not want to return to her former life as a Puritan wife under the restrictions of mutual watch, conformed in all her thoughts and mannerisms. She dreads the suspicious looks she will get, the interrogation by church elders, the distortion of her experience to create lessons in Christian piety for lectures and sermons. Yet she does not know what she wants instead. Could she turn her back on all things English and embrace Indian ways? What would become of her children? Her faith?
She thinks of James, of his protective kindness and compassion toward her, of his gentle ways, of the teasing affection in his smile. She thinks of how different he is from her husband. Despite the cold, she is sweating. She throws off the furs that cover her, gets to her feet, pulls a blanket around her, and slips out of the wetu. A gibbous moon lights her way as she walks through the village. She begins to hurry, as if her feet have a particular destination of their own, though she does not think about where she is going. Suddenly she finds herself in front of James’s wetu.
For several minutes she stands there, trying to gather her thoughts. Yet when she pushes open the flap and steps inside, she still has no idea what she will say, how she will explain this inappropriate and unseemly invasion of her friend’s home in the middle of the night.
It takes a moment for her eyes to adjust and find James’s sleeping form. He is lying on a platform. She makes her way across the wetu. “James!” she whispers, crouching beside him.
Instantly, he is awake and sitting up, brandishing a long knife. She recognizes it as the weapon he threatened her with in Weetamoo’s crowded wetu. She raises her hands, palms out in front of her face. “It is I. Mary,” she whispers. “I mean you no harm.”
“You should not be here.” His voice is hard. “I could have killed you.” He leans down and slides the knife under the platform.
“I am desperate,” she says. “You are my only friend in this place.”
“What do you want?”
She hesitates. Her ears fill with the sigh of the fire’s embers, the anxious beating of her own heart. “I do not wish to return to the English,” she whispers. “Please, let me stay with you.” Instantly, shame sweeps through her; she bows her head away from his gaze. Yet she feels strangely liberated by what she has said. For once, she has spoken the truth of her heart.
“What of your husband?” James asks, but she cannot answer. There is no proper response she can force her lips to offer. She hears him shift and feels his hands on her shoulders. “You are anxious and weary and near-starving. You are not thinking clearly.”
She knows he is right, yet anger flames through her at his words. She twists away, then instantly regrets it, for the pressure of his hands is the sweetest sensation she’s felt in weeks. “I believe my mind is clearer than it has ever been,” she says, but she realizes it is too late. He is already putting on his shirt, standing, moving to the door.
“Even if I wished this for you—”
“For us,” she says, rising and going to him. “Have I not discerned your feelings rightly?”
But he is shaking his head. “It makes no difference,” he says. “I have no power here. Like you, I am a servant. If you wish to stay, you must appeal to Philip or to Weetamoo. But—” He holds out his hand to prevent her from coming closer and touching him. She knows in that instant that she is right about his feelings, though he will not confirm it. For why would he resist her touch if it had no effect on him? “—I think it is too late. I believe your fate is already sealed.” He reaches for the door flap.
She starts to move past him when he touches her arm. Instantly her nostrils fill with his scent. She feels an overpowering impulse to lean against him. She does not—cannot—move. His hand does not leave her arm, and she does not remove it. She stands with her head bowed, wishing that she could think of something fitting to say, but no words come. She slowly realizes that no words are necessary—that he already knows and understands her heart.
“You cannot escape your fate, Chikohtqua.” She hears the kindness in his voice, the compassion that has always been there. “None of us can. I know you wish to stay. But there is no life for you here. There is no food, no safe village. The Indian ways are fading like a mist.”
She turns to face him, nodding, acknowledging their kinship. They are caught in the same web of events, subjected to the whims of both sachems and magistrates. James cannot extricate himself. Nor can she.
She steps into his embrace, as easily and naturally as a child, and he wraps his long arms around her as if they had been made exclusively for this purpose. She feels ripples of desire course through her, which she knows will never be consummated.
She has the heartrending sensation that she has finally come home—but is not able to stay.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
When Mary wakes the next morning, the sun has risen in a clear sky, and Weetamoo is already bent over the stew pot. She still wears the red stockings and the bracelets of wampum from the celebrations. “Come! Hurry!” Weetamoo says, beckoning Mary to her side. She shows Mary a pile of dead squirrels and explains in clear English that Quinnapin trapped them and that Mary is to clean them and cut them into the pot. Mary be
nds to her work and is surprised when Weetamoo joins her in scraping the hides once the meat is simmering. Now that her papoose is dead, she spends most of her time making necklaces of wampum. Though the two women don’t speak, Mary senses a new warmth from her, a strange companionship. She reminds herself that Weetamoo is likely pleased because Mary will soon bring money to her. Yet she cannot forestall a pang of sorrow.
Quinnapin comes to the wetu in the middle of the morning. He is obviously drunk. He staggers in and out of the wetu, calling out the names of his wives, one after another. When he sees Mary, he leers at her, grinning. Weetamoo is plainly vexed, but she says nothing, and when he stumbles past her, she presents her backside to him.
Mary has never seen a drunken Indian before, and finds it frightening. Quinnapin’s behavior is in sharp contrast to the usual disciplined carriage and manner of Indians. Now she realizes that their rectitude would not be possible if they regularly imbibed the beer and hard cider of English tables. Yet it occurs to her that perhaps she can use Quinnapin’s drunkenness to her advantage.
By late afternoon Mary is weary from hours of scraping hides and grinding corn from a basket Alawa fetched that had been stored underground. When Weetamoo finally dismisses her, Mary leaves the wetu with one aim in her heart—she will go to Quinnapin and plead her case. She will ask the sachem—she will beg, if necessary—permission to remain among the Indians.
• • •
Quinnapin is alone in the wetu, sprawled on a bearskin beside the fire, wearing only leggings and a breechclout. He looks up at Mary and smiles. It is clear that he is drunk beyond standing. If she were to flee, she does not believe he is capable of following.
“Sit,” he says, patting the mat next to him.
She sits down beside him. Her skin prickles as though raked with quills, though he does not touch her. She smells his breath—a powerful muskiness mingled with the sweet scents of tobacco and beer. He touches her neck and lets his hand slide down her shoulder. His fingers drift toward her breast. Mary thinks suddenly of James and feels her secret parts swell with desire. Shame sweeps through her, a humiliation so profound she begins to shake. She moves away from Quinnapin. His hand falls and he grunts. “Why you not love Quinnapin?” His words run together, as if spoken underwater. He raises a pint of beer to his lips and takes a long swallow. He licks his lips and smiles at her. “Why you come here if not for love?”
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