Hedge up my path lest I wander into camps of the wild men and the French who would ruinate me. Keep my lips far from tainted streams; direct my feet that I be not entangled in Satan’s covert snares, nor stumble before the arrows of his followers. Spike the artillery of hell and the flintlocks of Frenchmen; defend me from tomahawks, from ill circumstance, and from myself. Restore my soul to peace, remember Mary and Mother and Father and John and Joseph and Isaac and all my family and lead them to a paradise of rest, and if any are now hostage, keep them safe within the circle of your almighty power. Save me from the tribes of forest and seashore, from the fathomless evil that Frenchmen do, and from the ills of my own nature that barnacle and fast-holdme. Let me think on Christ’s mercy, and how lovely are his footsteps on the mountains and on the tops of waves.
My hope was to go south, perhaps to Salmon Falls, Kittery, Portsmouth, or Exeter as perhaps the nearest places, though they were merely names to me, and I did not know the way to any. Perhaps some no longer existed. Boston allured me as my former home, but it was farther, beyond Salem and Lynn, with probably more water to cross than I could manage. Portsmouth meant a town on the coast, perhaps on a tidal river. Any watercourses I might have to ford remained a mystery to me, and I wished that I had heeded my father more when he talked of the newer towns of the colony. Newbury and Rowley were somewhere farther south, perhaps below the Merrimack. Haverhill, if the place still existed, stood above the river—I could follow the coast and the Merrimack.
Surely it would be impossible to become entirely lost, hugging the Atlantic, and perhaps I would discover some smaller settlement clamped to the edge of the sea like a mussel to its rock. I would dare; I still had the dried fish to eat, an Indian jacket and a blanket against the cold, and a horse, though riding him had made me bruised and tender. Though it was too soon for mulberries or raspberries, I hoped there might be a handful of ripe strawberries in the meadows. About that, I was disappointed. Though doubting the current usefulness of spare clothes, stitching awl and needles, sampler, and doll, I determined to preserve what I had. For I owned nothing more. The scissors and knife would serve well, surely, and were my only harvesting tools and weapons. I did not have water for my clay bottle and needed to find some that did not taste of brine.
My journey southward resembled in small the sea-voyage accounts heard from those who sailed for three months on the ocean to the New World, an endlessness with one day much like another, interrupted by peculiar prodigies like Christly fish that could skip and fly on waves or whales breaching the surface, spraying a crown of diamonds and glory from their blowholes, or by sudden storms that slammed the ship to one side, then the other. On especially fair nights, the travelers might be permitted to come on deck to view the star meadows and bright-edged wisps and cloaks of cloud moving over the moon. Though the largest and most risky distance any of them had passed before, the voyage seemed to dissolve in the memory of travelers like a shaving of Barbados sugar dropped in a cup. For those brave far-farers, the undertaking might as well have been a single wondrously long day.
So was my journeying, each day mirroring the one prior, only with more or less water, more or fewer alarms, more coast or else more forest.
As soon as I left Falmouth and forged on, I lost all sense of where I was, as if wandering through a forest where no thing owned a name—for on home ground, all was known and named, the tufted place in the corn field where the plough never reached, the little hillock crowned with firs, the spinney of birches hung with curls of paper, the boulder that glittered with tiny isinglass windows that must be where infinitely small beings lived. A thousand landmarks stood all around us there, but the wilderness has no landmarks for the stranger. Perhaps it was but an untamed fancy, but at times I wondered if I had lost my name there, for I too was not known to any tree or stone or patch of earth. But I would speak to Hortus and know that the world still had names.
“Hortus, Hortus, do you know your name?”
Hortus would always give me a sign that he knew, swinging his head toward me or nickering or blowing a long, fluttering breath from his nostrils.
If Hortus was still Hortus, surely Charis was still Charis.
“My name is Charis,” I told him, “and we will find our way to a town and learn all the names and—”
And what? No names can summon the dead. No names can stop this sense of reeling, tripping into an abyss where all that should be is. . . just not.
I stayed wildered in my mind, a weathercock at the mercy of changeable gusts, my thoughts rushing to Mary, unburied, to my family and whether any of them still lived, to the ox and cow that must have been driven away and perhaps killed. My fears flashed to the mountain of flesh in Falmouth and the lives snuffed out, and sped on to the Mi’kmaq and the French who would murder me if they could. That first night, I rode by sparse moonlight, pointing Hortus’ head southward and letting him tread the sand or forest floor at his own pace, often lying against him and clinging to his neck out of weariness. For a horse is a great, feral-fragrant, seldom-sleeping beast, but a Charis must find sleep.
The journey to what became my final goal might have occupied only four days if I had been entirely fearless, owned such a precious rarity as a map, traveled by day, and had no rivers to ford. But I was not so courageous, however determined I was to do what I feared to do. My brothers had talked of the torments visited on settlers by the savage men of the woods, and sometimes repeated rumors of the cruelties of the French in urging them on. And the mound of murdered settlers loomed in my thoughts and cast a shadow. Had they held out and been killed, every last man, woman, and child? Or had they surrendered and been slaughtered despite a white flag and negotiation of terms? If that, what abomination!
From my hiding places, I watched a pouring, winged river of pigeons blot out the blue and clouds. Once an enormous gray heron, black-crowned and spectral, flapped from the tree where I had taken shelter, startling Hortus so that he shied and squealed and needed much coaxing before he would grow calm. (I slept not far from him, though I was wary, afraid that he would step on me.) Gulls screamed out unrest; they stabbed at my dreams. I regretted paying so little attention to the names of hawks and songbirds and sea fowl. Gathered like threads, their myriad lines of flight made only a nameless tangle in memory; yet is it strange that I felt an ache at the beauty of winged creatures, and a sense of being somehow mysteriously more than I was in earlier times? For loveliness mingles uncannily with grief and desolation.
Often I sought the sea’s edge and let Hortus plod on damp sand or earth. The ocean breeze tossed away the insects that sought to mine my flesh when I rode through the forest, for I could not sprout a whipping, fluttering spill of horsehair to fan them away. Moonlight made the whitecaps gleam and threw a moving smear of pallor on sand studded with shells and rocks that the waves had bowled to shore. How strong and muscled the ocean is, that it can dredge up heavy stones and pitch them along the beach for sport and pleasure! And I, sore and chafed, was not like the sea, all rhythmic force and endurance.
As the dusk settled and we ventured out from the trees where Hortus had been hobbled with strips torn and knotted from Mary’s shift, it often seemed to me that he and I wandered in what the ancient Romans named a locus amoenus, a pleasant place. Here were the desired grasses and trees and water. And the wild world was often more lovely than I had been told. Yet this was no delightful Eden-park, these no enchanting grounds with pools and water dripping over stones. If a garden, this land must be a treacherous one, ever close to roaring shoals. It was a boundlessness that looked at and measured me.
Only once did I encounter others face-to-face in the forest.
We had sallied forth at twilight, and Hortus was ambling along a dim trail in the woods when we came on Indians in single file, the foremost wearing a headdress with a horn extending from it as if he were some man-unicorn and, perhaps because he was leader, holding a staff. A long row of others padded behind him.
A flash of startle
ment cut through me. Though Hortus stopped, rocking his head and showing the whites of his eyes when he twisted his neck to look at me, and though I held still, my pulse set off like a pheasant in a burst of scuttle and flight.
Absurdly, awkwardly, as though I had come on some dear friend in the civil streets of Boston, I cried out, “How now? What cheer?”
The man-unicorn roared, “How now? What cheer?” and the others laughed and took up the shout, echoing, “What cheer, what cheer, what cheer,” until the blue dusk of the woods rang with noise.
The shadow figures vanished at a crook in the path, although I could still make out the occasional “How now?” or “What cheer?” and a rumble of what might have been laughter.
Trembling, I lay against Hortus and let myself sob once but no more.
“Pater,” I whispered, wishing hard that I could be a little child, safe on a bench by the chimbley, and near to my strong father.
Why did I not master my dread and dare to ask them the way to a town? How strange it was! They might have wrested the horse from me but did not. They might have brained me with a tomahawk, tugged scalp from bone, and catapulted my soul into death. Laughter, though, could not injure or kill me.
Sometimes when I made my hiding place at dawn, near a stream with mist rising off the surface and the spring flowers chilly under trees, the ancients’ vision of the underworld drifted into my mind—phantoms wandering the meadows of asphodel, unable to collect together the wisps of thought and speak without first drinking blood. That the biting insects sought my life made it seem even more so.
The water near the coast often proved briny and no good for replenishing my bottle. Thirst for fresh water began to shape my journey, for Hortus needed water even more than I did. I had no idea how many creeks and wider floods lay between me and any possible destination. Nor did I wish to leave the shore. But frequently I moved inland on the hunt for sweet water, and in that way I managed to miss, as it later proved, a few settlements entirely. Nor did I ever discover a ferry to help me across any watercourse, though I was grateful for deadfalls when they bridged a stream and often crossed alone, leaving Hortus to pick out a separate way. Once I came upon the abandoned foundation of a few houses and a log road to nowhere, packed and made smooth but deep in fallen twigs, needles, and leaves. More often I stumbled on the abandoned fields and tattered remains of Indian villages with bones and long-haired skulls left unburied, the residue of the pestilence that had swept along the coast not long before our colony was born, carrying off Wampanoag, Abenaki, and other tribes whose names I did not know. Yet I found no haven of an English house, no settlement of any kind. The world is so very large, and a horse and a maiden are tiny.
When I woke at sunset, insects buzzed near my head or crawled near my eyes. Once I found a pearly dodman climbing my hose, leaving a silvery track of his own slime.
“Measure me for a shroud, would you?” I flicked him away into the scrub and wiped my stocking with leaves.
Deer roamed the woods, appearing and disappearing with ghostlike ease that I envied. Once I saw a scattering of gigantic creatures like deer, some of them standing in a rushing creek, others moving ponderously into the forest. In a sunlit meadow I glimpsed the patriarch of the herd, his head crowned with new spring antlers.
Searching for a nest for the day, I smelled the rank, heavy scent of bear and heard a crashing noise nearby but only once spied bears in the open. They were eating a late supper of grubs or shoots, maybe, and did not pay heed to us, though Hortus minded them, bolting into the cover of trees while I hung onto his mane.
“Go easy,” I shouted at him, “easy!” but a horse can never take bears for granted.
Another time at twilight, a bobcat bounced with a rocking motion across the ground in front of us, as quick and weightless-looking as a moving shadow. Hortus stopped, planting his legs against such magics, but the beast vanished into the air.
Far more frightening images visited me in sleep. I dreamed of a giant hand with long, curved nails that pinched the flame from wicks of soft, melting candles and dropped them into a high, slovenly mound. Mary stirred in our green bower, reaching for me and calling to me reproachfully, “Charis, Charis, why did you leave me with the dodmen and angleworms? Help me up!” I would jerk and start from sleep, my pulse flittering, tears on my face. Sometimes I dreamed that I was back in our house near Falmouth or else in Boston, hunting for Mother, and that a clock was striking somewhere in a distant room. As I followed the sound through a maze of dark chambers, it grew louder until I realized that tomahawks knocked against the door. Waking, I would seek for Hortus and lay my hands on his back, taking comfort from the mighty bridge of his spine and his steadiness of breath.
Hast thou given the horse strength? Hast thou clothed his neck with thunder?
It is much to be a mortal woman and alive, walking though the realm where ground and heaven meet. But it is much also to be a horse, “swifter than the leopards” and “more fierce than the wolves in the evening.”
Without Hortus, I must have died in the wilderness, for it was he who ferried me over wide waters, and even across a terrible fast-running river like none I had seen before—one I could not ford in the night. I found a crossing place where the channel narrowed, and a ledge of stone extended into the water. That day I stayed awake, hunkered beside the flow, watching for the tide to turn and drain the salt sea back to where it belonged. And though I observed the billows rising and ebbing for a long time and tested the irregular, stony bottom in the shallows with a stave, I was not ready for cross-currents that ripped us sideways down the bed of the river when the ground beneath hooves dropped away. Hortus sank low, screamed his anger once, and lurched upward, swimming strongly against the muscular shove of water. Once, twice he leaped up like a locust with a loud noise and wings of water whirling from his sides. Never had the sealskin felt so slippery and uncertain a seat. I forgot every other trouble. I forgot the raw burning of my limbs. I forgot loss and family. I forgot the sight of the dead heaped like firewood. The skirts of my gown dragged, and I knew that if I tumbled in, my layers of cloth would weigh me down like petticoats of stone. I seized hold of Hortus’ neck and mane, lying close against him.
And I called aloud to God and horse alike. “Christ, have mercy! Hortus, swim, swim hard for land, fleet as a leopard!”
At the farther shore, Hortus shouldered from the waves and stood shuddering with his legs quivering in the rock-bottomed shallows. I could not unclench my hands and slumped against him, shaken by memory of the river and by the horse’s trembling. Slowly his legs quieted. He moved onto the edge of land and stood with head cocked as if listening to the tap-tap-tap of water dripping from his body onto stone. When I slid from his side, I collapsed onto the rocks, lying with my arms out and skirts spread in the sun. A glouse of heat did me good, and I did not stir for a long time, though the sow-pigs crawled from the cracks in the stone and came trundling to investigate the drenching I had given their houses.
“Little old-sows,” I whispered.
All that I possessed was soaked, and what was left of the Mi’kmaq’s shards of fish had been eaten by the waves, along with the moccasins and birchbark box. The last of the sugared almonds were food for the fishes. Hortus nosed me, mumbling at my arms, and I laughed for the first time since the burning of our house, surprised to find myself pleased to be alive. Satisfied, he walked off and began lipping at some weeds growing among boulders.
Unexpectedly, tears coursed down my face.
Warm and damp, drifting in and out of a drowse, I was gathered into a dream or something more. A smolder of light on the spring sky divided, flickered, and sparked; it seemed to me that three figures danced on a tightrope, tossing a blue and green ball between them. They wove and leaped on the line so that I could not tell one from another. What I knew was that they were full of joy, and the glory of it filled me up, as if I were a little holy house that could be bright within, and maybe even float up and meet them in the air.
I stared, held by their playfulness. Only slowly did they vanish into the brightening sun, taking their joy and frolic and love for one another away from me. Though I watched the sky, they had passed through some secret door and were not to be seen again.
A bishybarnybee lit on my hand, as if to bring me some color and cheer. I admired her nine spots on a coat like blood.
“Go you on—fly away and fetch me better luck,” I told her, but she only crawled from finger to finger, tickling my skin.
So I sang a verse to her in a weak, rickety manner, for that was all I could do.
Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home,
Samuel lies under the grindlestone.
Your house is on fire, your children will burn,
And Hannah goes hiding beneath the churn.
Ladybird, ladybird, mind the bishopman,
Your Liz is a-creeping in the porridge pan.
Bloody Bones Bonner is on your doorsill
To snatch and to catch and to burn little Will.
That was not much of a nursery song but the best I could manage. The creature perched on my fingernail, twiddling her front legs. Her red martyr-wings and the secret bronze ones beneath flashed, and she was away.
“Good fortune to me,” I murmured, reaching up to pat Hortus, who had come to see why I lay so still and now leaned down his head to blow warm breath on my cheek.
“You are the godly, neighing wonder-horse in Job that swallowed the ground as he galloped in fierceness and rage,” I told him. “And that power has saved us both.”
Soaked and chilled, I fell asleep on the stones and dreamed that I sailed in a ship with Hortus, who stood tall by the mast, his mane ruffled by the breeze. When I woke, I picked violet leaves and flowers to eat and was content. Wearied by the waves, Hortus drowsed, his lids shuttered and lips drooping.
Charis in the World of Wonders Page 7
