Flight of the Sparrow

by Amy Belding Brown

  She finds her voice at last. “I came because I must ask a favor of you,” she says.

  He nods, slowly. His eyes begin to close and he stretches out full-length. She sees that he is about to go to sleep. She has misjudged her opportunity; her plan has soured. She shifts toward him, puts her hand on his arm. His eyes open; she sees that he is having trouble focusing. “What favor?” There are flecks of spittle at the corners of his mouth.

  “Please do not redeem me to the English. I wish to stay here. With your people.”

  He blinks again, starts to sit up, and collapses back on the mat. Then, suddenly, he is laughing, the laughter rolling up from his belly through his chest. He laughs and laughs; it seems he cannot stop.

  She gets to her feet. He is far too drunk to understand her. There is no point in pressing her request. His laughter finally subsides and he lies watching her through half-closed eyes. She thinks he is asleep when he rouses again, pushing his torso up on his elbows.

  “You go.” He finds the pint bottle with his hand and drinks again, long and deep. “Go back to English where you belong.” He is still smiling as he dismisses her with a flick of his fingers.

  Mary makes her way back to Weetamoo’s wetu, grateful for the late afternoon’s long shadows. She is a woman with no people, no place of safety or comfort. Save her own corrupted heart.

  • • •

  In the evening, James comes to Weetamoo’s wetu with the news that the sachems have decided on terms for Mary’s release.

  “Twenty pounds in goods and a pint of liquor for Quinnapin,” he says. “To be delivered by Mary’s husband.”

  Her fingers tremble and she drops the shirt she is mending. It makes a small pyramid of muslin on her lap. “I do not think my husband will be able to meet the price.”

  “It is the price you named.” James regards her thoughtfully, as if trying to determine whether her words cloak some darker intention. “Surely he has friends who will help. And I think you shall be redeemed whether you wish it or no.” James gives her a thin smile. “We all face redemption of one sort or another in these sad times.”

  She is frightened. And angry. “You arranged this,” she says. “You have acted all along as Philip’s servant.”

  His face darkens and he leaves the wetu abruptly. She realizes she has said too much. And, worse yet, none of it is true.

  • • •

  From that moment until her release Mary is never alone. Alawa follows her like a shadow everywhere she goes. It is unsettling after so many weeks of liberty—a sharp reminder that she is a prisoner after all, that her feelings of freedom have been illusory and fleeting. She knows too well that once she returns to English society the restrictions will be greater still. She will be constantly watched. She will never be free again to walk unobserved in the woods or to stray on a hillside to watch a storm roll in or to study the sunlight as it plays over the river. The natural world, which has unexpectedly become a solace in her captivity, will again be her enemy. And the wild stirrings of desire, the strange wings of joy she has experienced watching the Indians dance, will be gone forever.

  • • •

  In the morning, Alawa tells Mary that her time has come. She does not think she can bear leaving without her children. Sarah’s body lies forsaken in the wilderness. Joss and Marie—if they are alive—are still with the Indians. She does not belong with the English anymore. Nor does she have any future with the Indians.

  Two warriors come and bind her hands together. Alawa tells her not to be afraid; this is part of the ransom ritual. They put a rope around her neck and lead her to the great rock behind the council lodge. All the sachems are there except Philip. Quinnapin is dressed in his deerskin robe and headband, all decorated with fox tails, his hair lying loose across his broad shoulders. Weetamoo is regal in her long belts of wampum. She makes out James among a group of warriors nearby. Mary looks around the clearing for her husband, but he is not there. The only Englishman present is Squire Hoar—a lawyer from Concord.

  The Indians make a great ceremony of releasing her, sharing a pipe and exchanging gifts while she stands bound before them. She bows her head as a shameful heat suffuses her face. She steals a glance at James, but he is looking away. Finally, they cut her bonds, and Quinnapin orders her to go.

  “My children!” she moans, hesitating. “I cannot leave without my children!” Someone shoves her—she does not see who—and she stumbles away on uncertain feet, shrinking from Squire Hoar’s welcoming hand and finally clutching it only to keep from collapsing. She is not able to stop herself from glancing over her shoulder. Like Lot’s wife, she looks back, for she does not have sufficient faith to go forward.

  There is Quinnapin, regarding her solemnly. Nearby, Weetamoo glares at her the way a hawk watches its wounded prey. Behind them stands James, his sorrowful gaze like an arrow, piercing her.

  Squire Hoar catches her by the arm and hisses into her ear. “Do not show reluctance. We must hurry away from this place. The sachems are capricious and could change their minds in an instant.” He steers her down the sloping land to where his horse is tethered and helps her to mount. She keeps her head down, so she will not meet James’s eyes again. Yet, as the mare picks her way down the long trail and the rock recedes behind them, she begins to weep.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Perhaps he does not know she is weeping, because the squire offers Mary no comfort except for a thick slab of bread. As she eats, she gazes through blurred eyes at his back where a worn spot in his gray wool cloak reminds her of an eye. After a while she finds her voice and asks if he has any news of Joss and Marie. Have they, too, been ransomed? He answers that the authorities are hopeful there will be others, but as of this day, she is the only one to be redeemed. She feels as if a stone has dropped into her bowels and does not speak again. Her nose runs and she wipes her face with the corner of her blanket. Her dress is stained with grease and dirt, and her mouth feels similarly defiled. Yet the rocking warmth of the mare’s flesh beneath her thighs provides an unexpected comfort.

  She notices a sparrow flit from branch to branch above her head. She sees bars of late afternoon light slant through the trees and stares at tufts of new grass and at wet rocks in the stream when they stop to water the mare.

  Two Indians accompany them, silent as the enveloping trees. They wear the garb of Praying Indians, a jumble of English and Indian apparel. Mary suspects they are spies, though for which side she cannot guess.

  After some time the squire begins to speak, and he talks on and on. He tells her that English soldiers had arrived in Lancaster before nightfall the very day of the attack. Her house—or what remained of it—was still smoldering. The soldiers counted fourteen bodies, two burned beyond recognition. They calculated that there must have been twenty captured. The squire reports these things in a dry, straightforward tone, as if he were counting felled trees. He talks of the hostilities and of the recent English victory on the western frontier, where Indians have been surprised in a great encampment and many slain. He explains in detail the arrangements made in Boston for her ransom, but she can no longer concentrate on his words. She thinks of James and wonders what will become of her children. She thinks of Joseph and wonders how she will greet him. What will he think of her when he sees how disordered she has become? How will she greet him knowing that he did not come to her rescue?

  She recalls that the previous summer Joseph was offered a chaplaincy for English troops. It was a good position, a mark of the respect he had earned in the Bay Colony. Yet he refused it. “Out of a necessary caution,” he answered when she questioned him. “I have a congregation to serve here.”

  Late in the afternoon they come to a clearing that Mary recognizes by the low slope of land falling down to a river. Unplowed fields run beside them, a sea of pale grasses and weeds. The river twists in a wide, black ribbon through the empty landscape. There is a charre
d hole in the field where a barn once stood.

  Lancaster is gone. Not just in ruins, but vanished, as if God himself has swept it clear. Only the pastures remain, greening under the May sky, pale as quinces. The squire apologizes profusely, as if he were responsible for the destruction. He wishes, he says, there was another road that would not take them through the place of devastation. He spurs his horse to a trot as they approach the slope of land where Mary’s house stood, as if speed might relieve her grief.

  “Oh,” she says, a low moan that comes from deep within. “Please. I would see the place.”

  He turns slightly, to look at her over his shoulder. “’Tis late,” he says. “It will soon be night. And we are not yet in safe territory.”

  Mary is silent for a moment, but the urgent desire to see her home overcomes her restraint. “Please, Squire. Surely we will come to no harm if we linger just a short while. I wish to look on it.” Her voice breaks as she says the last words and feels him turn the mare, relenting.

  There is nothing of her home but the cellar hole, a dark smear on the hill. Not a stick is left standing. Mary slides off the mare and walks across the greening patch of ground that was once her dooryard.

  “You must hurry. We dare not remain past dark.” The squire has not dismounted, but sits his horse as if rooted there. The Indians, who have no horses, stand at some distance, their faces well shadowed by trees.

  She crosses to the wide, flat stone that was her doorstep. As she steps onto it, some devil’s spirit seizes her and her mind slips, tumbling back as a child might roll helter-skelter down a hill. She sees again the blood on the snow, hears the screams for mercy from the throats of friends and relatives, feels her heart scrambling in her chest as if trying to find its frantic way out. She stands as one bewitched, recalling all that transpired on that morning of horror.

  • • •

  Mary does not know how long she stands there before Squire Hoar’s voice jars her from her trance. The sun has already fallen below George Hill and the long shadows of afternoon have become dusk. She looks at him as one deluded with visions. She scarcely perceives his features, the memories have so infested her.

  “Mistress Rowlandson?” He dismounts and places his hand beneath her arm to steady her. It is plain that he believes she has suffered a fit of some kind; perhaps he expects her to fall to the ground and convulse. And perhaps he is right to think so, for Mary finds herself unable to speak. It is as if her tongue has been pulled from its root and can no longer move in her mouth.

  “We must find a place to tarry the night,” the squire says. There is a strained, fretful quality to his voice that she has not heard before. “We cannot travel in the dark.”

  She wants to ask why they cannot. Hasn’t she walked over many miles of rough trail in greater darkness? But her crippled tongue will not permit her question. She manages to nod, and follow him back to his horse, and clumsily remount. She keeps looking back over her shoulder, even as the squire directs his mare along the road.

  • • •

  They take shelter in what remains of the garrison house belonging to Cyprian Stevens. Its stockade is gone and half the house has been blasted away. The front door gapes; wood shards rise like teeth from the sill. When Mary examines the blackened chimney bricks, the squire tells her that the Indians returned after their attack and used gunpowder to finish their work.

  Squire Hoar builds a fire on what is left of the hearth and then draws bread and cheese from his satchel of provisions and offers them to her. Shadows rise and fall on the scorched plaster walls as they eat. After a while he inquires about her treatment by the Indians. His voice surprises her with its gentle concern and she soon finds herself pouring out her trials to him. She tells of Sarah’s death and the slow healing of her own wound. She recounts the long days of marching, of forcing herself to go on when she was on the verge of collapse. She speaks of how hunger and privation taught her to take pleasure in Indian food.

  He listens with a smile of pity. Finally she runs out of words. “I forget myself,” she says. “I fear it has been too long since I spoke with an Englishman.”

  He nods slowly, then says, “You have not yet asked after your husband.”

  She feels as if he has just slapped her face. Her cheeks burn, yet she can manage no words of contrition. “He did not come,” she says, the words scratching her throat strangely, as if they are filled with tiny barbs. “I thought—” She stops and swallows. “I have heard it rumored that he has remarried.”

  He dips his head as if complicit in a conspiracy, but then she sees he is only struggling to contain a smile. “I fear the Indians have tricked you,” he says. “They are overly fond of making mischief, though the truth is they mean no harm. No, your husband has not remarried. He waits for you in Boston.”

  She expels a breath. “He is well, then, I hope?”

  “Well enough. I know he will rejoice to see you.” He takes a pipe from his satchel, pours tobacco into the bowl, lights it, and draws deeply. Mary has a sudden memory of Philip drawing on his pipe after telling her his story of the Mohawks gathering wood. She smiles and wonders why she did not detect the story’s humor at the time. She was still learning Indian ways.

  “He has been greatly occupied raising your ransom,” the squire says.

  She looks longingly at the ribbons of smoke. “The sachems said he would be present at my redemption.”

  “Mistress Rowlandson.” He places his pipe carefully on his knees. He leans forward, his manner that of a king bestowing wisdom on his subject. “They asked a dear price for you. It was not a simple task to come by twenty pounds.”

  • • •

  In the morning, they discover their two Indian guides have left sometime in the night. The squire does not appear surprised. Nor is Mary, for she is now well acquainted with the Indian inclination for stealth and independence of mind.

  The squire tells her it is Sunday, and asks if she wishes to tarry longer at the ruined Stevens house, in observance of the Sabbath rule. She shakes her head. “I have not observed the Sabbath in many weeks,” she says. “We had best continue on.” She knows that if they linger she will be tempted to disappear into the forest like the Indian guides, and try to make her way back to Philip’s camp.

  As they ride past the hill where the meetinghouse stands guard over the stones of the burying ground, Mary recalls the last time she sat on the pew bench listening to her husband. The world has become so disordered, it seems as if years—not months—have passed.

  They pass abandoned barns and houses. The squire tells her that all the frontier farms have been deserted. Everyone has fled east, taking refuge with friends and family who live in the towns near the sea. He describes the way the Indians butchered the English and burned whole villages. He says that now only soldiers venture beyond their yards.

  When they reach Concord, the squire dismounts and walks through the village, leading his horse with Mary on it. At first she thinks the place is abandoned, but she soon sees that faces are peering from the tiny windows and half-open doors. Two young boys squat at the side of the lane playing a game with pebbles. A man comes out of a house carrying a yoke. Mary sees a woman in the shadowed doorway behind him. The squire calls out cheerfully and the man acknowledges his greeting with a solemn nod. Soon after, the squire stops in front of a large frame house set against a hillside.

  “My home,” the squire announces. “We will stop here for some refreshment and Christian fellowship. Which,” he adds, as he helps her dismount, “I warrant you have sorely missed these past months.”

  “Aye,” she says, though her agreement is accompanied by a shiver of trepidation. Will the faces of her fellow Christians be filled with judgment? Or pity? Instead of following the squire across the yard to the door, she finds herself staring at a wooden palisade a few yards to the east.

  “Ah,” he says, “I see you f
ind my garrison of interest. But you need not fear for your safety, Mistress Rowlandson. You are perfectly secure now.” He comes back across the yard to stand beside her. “I had it built for my Praying Indian friends, who lived there under my protection,” he says. “Though there were many in town who wished them dead.” Some of the ten-foot-tall posts no longer stand upright, but lean inward, as if in discouragement. The stockade is not very big, no more than fifteen feet square. She wonders how many people lived there.

  Mary thinks of James. Of his family’s exile to Deer Island. “What became of them?” she asks. “Did they join Philip’s warriors?”

  The squire shakes his head. “I have sometimes thought it would be better for them if they had. But Captain Moseley came to town one day and arrested every one of them. Women and children and old men as well as the young. It was a Lord’s Day, and we were all at the meetinghouse. Yet in he marched with all his soldiers behind him, like the Devil and his minions, and there he declared his foul purposes.”

  Mary frowns, for this seems an unlikely tale. “He interrupted worship? Is it not against the law?”

  “Moseley cares nothing for law. He came in during the sermon, stated his wicked intention and threatened to arrest any who sought to impede him. I slipped out and hurried home to defend my friends. But my striving came to naught.” He turns his back on the palisade, as if to get more quickly away from his memory. “Captain Moseley and those like him are a terrible scourge on this land,” he says. “It is one thing to be valiant in battle, quite another to visit tortures upon innocent women and children. It is said that he ordered one of his young Indian captives stripped of her clothes and he himself applied hot knives to her breasts.”