Flight of the Sparrow (17 page)

“No.” He shakes his head. “No one hurt you.” He rises and gestures to someone behind him and a young woman comes forward, holding a scrap of meat. It is a moment before Mary understands the woman is offering it to her. She takes the meat and eats as another woman approaches with a small bowl of finely ground meal, followed by one who drops a handful of withered peas into her wet apron. Mary can make no sense of it. The Indians who just mocked her are now generously sharing their food. A moment ago, they stood in a circle around her laughing, yet now they are filled with kindness.

She sees James standing at the far edge of the crowd, watching. After a moment, he disappears into the forest. She feels oddly bereft, as if he has rejected her and is no longer her friend. She wants to go after him, but two warriors stand between her and the trees, and when she pushes herself to her feet, they glare at her so fiercely she sinks back to the ground.

The Indians gradually drift away, leaving her alone on the shore except for the warriors. She continues to sit where she fell, eating the food she was given, waiting for some vigor to flow back into her body as she ponders what will happen next.

•   •   •

L
ate in the afternoon, the warriors pull her to her feet and lead her up the hill to a wetu so long it has three smoke holes. The camp is a haze of sound and color. Smoke rises from hundreds of
wetus. Sunlight slashes through trees and makes puddles of light on the ground. Snow has melted from the clearings, leaving patches of wet earth. Children squat in the mud, fashioning tiny animals from clots of black earth: deer, rabbits, dogs. Women come out of the wetus to watch Mary.

Inside, the two warriors squat on the ground and Mary finds herself standing in front of a man who sits cross-legged on a platform covered with many skins. She assumes this is Philip. He wears an English shirt and breeches. He looks to be about her age, though there is an extraordinary weariness in his gaze. He has a well-shaped head and wide shoulders. His chest is draped in a bone necklace and three wide belts of wampum.
He has only one attendant—a short man whose right forearm is wrapped in a serpent tattoo and who looks at Mary with more curiosity than cruelty.

Philip surprises her by speaking English. He asks her to sit next to him and offers her a pipe to smoke. She looks at it longingly. For years, she has been fond of tobacco, yet she knows she cannot consent to sharing a pipe with an Indian, no matter how powerful, without compromising her honor. She notes the flicker of displeasure that crosses his face when she refuses. Yet it is quickly gone, like a flash of light on a river, replaced by a look of mild amusement.

He draws on his pipe and leans back comfortably against a reed mat decorated with feathers that hangs behind him. She notices that his right hand is misshapen. “You know Mohawk?” he asks, watching her.

Mary frowns, wondering if he is setting a trap. She remembers Alawa telling her she was born Mohawk and that James had once referred to the Mohawk as a savage, warlike people. “I have heard of them,” she says cautiously.

“Mohawk foolish people,” he says. “Do stupid things. Listen. One time, long ago, Mohawk people go to sachem and ask, ‘Will winter be cold or not?’ Sachem does not know but says go gather wood for winter fires and then he goes to visit
pauwau
. It is long
walk to
pauwau
’s
wetu. Sachem must go up mountain and down again, over many stones. When he finally reach him,
pauwau
says, ‘Yes, winter will be cold.’ So sachem goes back to people and says people must hurry, gather much wood.” Philip draws again on his pipe; white smoke curls from the corners of his mouth.

Mary wonders why he is telling her this story. She wonders if it is true. The two warriors are watching him with little smiles on their faces.

“Ten days pass,” Philip continues, “and sachem thinks again about winter and goes back to
pauwau.
‘Will it be
very
cold winter?’ he asks, and
pauwau
says yes, it will be very cold winter. So sachem goes back to people and tells them hurry, gather every stick of wood in forest. Ten days more pass and sachem travels again to
pauwau
. He is weary from long walk. ‘Are you sure winter will be very cold?’ he asks
pauwau.
Pauwau
says, ‘Yes, I am sure it will be very cold winter.’ Sachem asks, ‘Did ancestor spirits tell you this?’
Pauwau
says, ‘Not ancestor spirits.’” Philip pauses; his eyes flash. “‘I am sure because I see Mohawk people gather so much wood!’”

He smiles and the warriors laugh, as does his attendant. Philip draws on the pipe, releases the smoke and laughs out loud. It occurs to Mary that his story must be a jest and, though she cannot see much humor in it, she forces herself to smile.

Philip shifts on the platform, leaning toward her. Apparently his jest was a customary pleasantry because his amused expression disappears and he begins to quiz her. He asks if her husband is wealthy, and when she says he is not, that he is only a poor minister working in the Lord’s service, he laughs again. He says something to his servant that she cannot understand. Then he leans toward her. “I have plan,” he says. “For you.”

A ripple of alarm runs up her spine. “What plan?” she asks, but he does not answer. Instead he tells her that, as long as she proves herself a good captive, she will remain alive.

She bows her head, in what she hopes is a suitable gesture of
deference. “My master treats me well,” she says, thinking of Quinnapin’s kindness on the shore.

Philip’s smile disappears. “Weetamoo is sister.” He pats his chest. “You honor Weetamoo.”

She dips her head again.

“You not run away home,” he says. “You live. Maybe we sell you back to English.”

She feels a jolt of confusion. “You mean to release me?”

He does not answer. Instead, he tilts his head and asks, “Do you sew cloth?”

Mary slides her hand into her pocket and wraps her fingers around her mother’s scissors. “Aye,” she says.

“You sew shirt for my papoose?” he says. “I like English cloth.” And he plucks at the sleeve of his shirt.

“Yes,” she says, smiling. Relief washes through her. “I will gladly sew a shirt for your babe.”

He smiles back before dismissing her with a flick of his hand. As she leaves, his servant presses a folded square of muslin into her hands, enough to make a child’s shirt. The warriors escort her to Weetamoo’s wetu, where she is immediately ordered to skin a freshly killed rabbit and scrape the hide clean. She obeys with suitable diligence. Yet she senses that her prospects are better than they were an hour ago because Philip has taken notice of her. Whether or not he decides to ransom her back to the English, he has opened the way for her to profit from her skill with needle and scissors.

She knows that Joseph would tell her that this new opportunity is God’s guiding grace, but Mary has seen so little of God’s succor since her capture that she has come to believe, like Ann Joslin, that He is absent from the wilderness.

•   •   •

T
hey remain in Philip’s camp for nearly a fortnight. When Weetamoo fails to assign her a task, Mary sits and sews, which gives her long hours of contemplation. She watches people come
and go, notices that some of them exchange possessions for food—small baskets, belts, squares of cloth, fox furs, necklaces of feathers and bone. She thinks about Joss and Marie and frets over their welfare, praying that they have not been bewitched by Indians. When she is not thinking of them, she grieves for Sarah. She recalls the terrible burden of carrying her fevered and wounded body on the trail. She remembers thinking that very burden kept her alive. She thinks about Joseph and wonders what he is doing. Is he courting another woman? Is he married as the rumors say? She begins to accept the fact that he will not come for her and her affection for him shrivels.

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.

•   •   •

W
hen 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.