Flight of the Sparrow (43 page)

She feels overwhelmingly sad. She cannot believe James thrives here, confined to this small room. She remembers him as she last saw him—shadowed in the winter night under the stars, opening his hand to receive her Bible. He must perceive his life in Boston as a cruel redemption. Her own redemption has cost her much, as well—her integrity and, perhaps, her faith. She thinks of the many changes Increase made to her pages, how he took out entire sections, how he added Scriptures and pieties, how he cast the Indians as agents of the Devil. How she voiced no objection to his authority to make her experience fit his purposes.

She touches Samuel’s arm. “We should leave and let this good man return to his labors.” She is suddenly desperate to get out of the shop.

“I am honored by your visit,” the printer says amiably. “We hope to have the first copy printed within the month. As you can see, we are exceedingly busy.” He gestures to the press. “My apprentice has been setting type a fortnight past.”

“James,” Mary whispers and pinches her lips together. She had not intended to say his name aloud.

Goodman Green gives her a startled look, even as he nods. “Aye, his Christian name is James.”

“I would be grateful if you would thank him on our behalf,” Samuel says.

The printer raises one eyebrow. “Thank him?”

“For his good work,” Samuel says. “And for showing charity to my wife when she had great need of it.” And he presses a small pouch of coins into the printer’s hand.

Without warning, tears sting Mary’s eyes. She turns away while the printer is thanking her husband and steps over the doorsill into the gray light. Then she sees him: James, walking quickly toward the shop, his head down, eyes on the cobblestones; it is plain he does not see her. He looks much as she last saw him, though his hair is cropped short and he wears only English clothes under his printer’s apron. There is a sad urgency in his gait and his back seems to sag, as if he carries a great burden.

He raises his head suddenly and blinks at her, as if the gray light is too bright.

Mary stumbles toward him. She feels as if she is walking a great distance, though it is only a few yards across the cobblestones. Everything looks sharp and jagged—the intersection between the cloth of James’s shirt and the air seems to vibrate. She reaches out and brushes the cloth with her fingers.

He looks down at it as if her hand is a rare curiosity he has not seen before. He says nothing.

“I had not thought to see you again,” she ventures.

“Nor I you.” He glances past her, and she turns to follow his glance. Samuel is now talking with the carriage driver, deliberately giving her privacy. “Is this man your new husband?” James asks.

“Aye,” she says quickly, “I am wed to Samuel Talcott now.”

“I trust you have found happiness,
Chikohtqua.
”

His use of her Indian name stops her breath. She recalls the clear, luminous moment in Increase Mather’s parlor when she realized she loved him. “Happiness,” she says softly. “Yes, I can rightly call myself a happy woman.” She is aware of his gaze, how it still pierces her heart, after all this time. “And you? Are you not happy?”

He tilts his head, as if in thought. But she sees the anger in his eyes. “I will be happy when my children come back to me and I return to Hassanamesit, where my mother gave me life.”

“Then you must go soon,” she says firmly.

He shakes his head slowly. “The English have forbidden it. They keep close watch, lest Indians rise up again to oppose them. Even though so few of us remain. They threaten the people with death if we leave Natick. And now they are trying to persuade us to sell our land, since we cannot live on it.”

A bolt of anger goes through her at this flagrant injustice. Her throat clutches at some words, but she cannot utter them. Two women hurry past, throwing dark looks her way. Mary watches them proceed down the street, heads tilted toward each other.

James leans closer. “Aye, you ought to have a care for your reputation. If you are seen talking with an Indian and recognized, all your efforts at restoration will be in vain.”

“I made no effort at restoration,” she says.

“Then what is your book but an attempt to redeem yourself in English eyes? I have read it many times, for I set the type and know each letter.”

She bows her head.

“You could have told the story true,” he says. “But you have salted it with lies.”

It takes her a moment to find her tongue. “It has been altered by another,” she says. “It is not the story I wrote. It is the story they
required
me to tell.”

“You should not have allowed your name to be attached to it,” he says.

Blood pounds in her ears. “Would you have me driven into exile like Anne Hutchinson for saying what they do not wish to know? How long would it be before they banished me?”

He leans toward her. “But what have they left you? What has this book cost you?”

“I have my place in society,” she says weakly.

“The English used you.” He pauses. “As they used me. We are alike in that.” He gives her a smile that she cannot interpret. “Perhaps it is a mercy. Those they do not use, they kill. We have both bought our redemption at a terrible price. You had to forge a lie. I had to bring in the heads of innocent men. We have both sold our souls to gain acceptance in this new and terrible world.”

His words scorch her. She stares at him until his face ripples and shimmers. “Does love mean nothing?” she whispers, but he does not seem to hear her. “I am sorry,” she says, reaching for his hand. “So very sorry.” And she clasps his fingers as desperately as Weetamoo must have clutched the raft before the river tossed her to her death.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Mary
rides back to Boston in silence, going over and over her conversation with James. She thinks of the many Indians sold into slavery and of those confined in Natick, without the freedom to roam through the wilderness that was once theirs. They are a dying nation, their towns burned, their lands appropriated, their very bodies starved and crushed and sold. All in the name of God.

It seems to Mary that she is trapped in a great web of English deceit and cruelty. That she has unwittingly allowed herself to become one of the sticky strands. Yet she has sometimes acted rightly—in giving aid and succor to Bess Parker, in refusing to allow her children to be whipped, in repudiating slavery, and in refusing to keep slaves in her own house. She is suddenly struck by the thought that the times she felt redeemed were when she
ignored
the counsel of the clerics and goodwives around her and followed the promptings of her own heart. How strange that venturing away from accepted wisdom was the very path by which she found herself.

It is a sweet relief to lie in Samuel’s arms that night. Yet even
the blessed joining of their flesh does not assuage the terrible new ache in Mary’s heart.

•   •   •

T
hey make the long journey back to Wethersfield on horseback, accompanied by two traders and a Mohegan scout. Though the Indians have been subdued, it is widely feared that rebellious warriors might still attack lone travelers. Mary sits behind Samuel and they talk of their sojourn in Boston. They discuss Mary’s conversation with James and the sorrow that overcame her when he spoke of what had happened to his people.

“Something must be done to help him return to his home,” Mary says. “You are an influential man. You know many people of consequence in both the Connecticut and Bay colonies. Surely you could persuade the authorities to open the Indian towns.”

Samuel laughs. “I think you overrate me, wife. I warrant it is your influence that will be most keenly felt in these colonies, thanks to your pen. Why don’t you write to the new governor of the Bay Colony and make your case?”

She considers his words. It would be a bold endeavor for a woman. One she would not have considered before her captivity. Yet now she sees that it is not only the right action, but the necessary one.

“Perhaps I shall,” she says, shifting to a more comfortable position on the horse.

“Nay, I spoke in jest, Mary,” Samuel says. “Clearly, the authorities are convinced it would be dangerous to allow the Indians to return to their homes, else they would not have required them to live in Natick. It is plain they must be closely watched.”

“Plain?” she says. “How is that? We have slain and enslaved them and taken all their lands.” Samuel knows her feelings on slavery, but he clearly does not fully agree with her new concern.

“I suspect it is more a point of wisdom than principle.” Samuel
is a practical man. Unlike Joseph, he does not admonish Mary with verses of Scripture, but uses reason and persuasion to bring her around to his thinking. “The prospect of success in English endeavors here requires the regulation and containment of the natives.”

Mary falls silent, thinking again of the Indians. Samuel is wrong. It is
not
a practical matter, but one of principle. She recalls again what James said the night she slept in his wetu:
While we draw breath, there is always some way we can show mercy and kindness.

“Yet I trust you will not constrain me, Samuel, should I try to do what I can to bring this matter into the light.”

“
Constrain
you?” Samuel laughs. “I doubt I should be able to if I tried.” He turns to look at her. “Nay, wife, you must follow your conscience wherever it takes you.”

Mary leans forward to kiss him on the cheek. In broad daylight.

•   •   •

T
he journey home is long and wearisome. They do not draw near Wethersfield until late on a Thursday afternoon. They ride slowly past fields of onions and winter rye. The sky is sheathed in low clouds, thick as the fleece on unshorn sheep. Mary hears the lowing of cows and the throaty song of blackbirds from the river. She peers at a low barn on one side of the road and an orchard on the other. Beyond the orchard lies impenetrable forest. In her fatigue, she thinks she sees a flicker of light among the trees, and the sound of Indian drums. She leans away from the broad comfort of Samuel’s back and rubs her eyes with her fingertips, trying to penetrate the forest gloom. Did she glimpse the glow of a circle fire, or was it her imagination? Has she mistaken the cadence of the horse’s hooves for drums?

“Samuel.” She taps him on the shoulder. “Did you hear something just now? Drums? Or chanting?”

Samuel half turns on the horse and peers at the forest, where
she is pointing. “I heard something, but I doubt ’tis drums. I suspect we heard nothing but the wind and horses.” He smiles and reaches back to grasp her hand. “You are weary. ’Twas likely your imagination.” Mary appreciates the gentle affection in his voice, yet she knows what she heard was not the wind.

She leans forward to rest against his back and closes her eyes. She thinks of the flickering lights and the pulsing drums. She is certain she heard and saw
something.
Perhaps it was a phantasm of the past—a shimmer of ghostly impressions in the afternoon air. Or maybe an omen of a future not yet born. The Indian resistance has been shattered, but she cannot conceive them a wholly broken people. Perhaps—and Mary finds herself praying this—the Indians will find a way to prevail. Perhaps their drumming will be loud again. Perhaps the people will rise from the ashes.

Mary has no chance to determine the truth of her perceptions, for a moment later Samuel says, “Home!” in a cheerful voice and turns the horse into their lane. As they approach the house, the sun breaks through the clouds and casts its rays over the fields on their left and right. Then the front door opens and the children come running out—Benjamin and Rachel first, their curls golden in the light, then Elizur and Hannah and Mary’s own Marie, who carries little Nathaniel on her hip. Samuel slides off the horse and helps Mary down, and the two of them hurry forward, arms open for an embrace. The children tumble around them, their warm bodies jostling Samuel’s legs and Mary’s skirts and limbs, their excitement filling the air like a rising breeze.

Mary kisses each child, tells them over and over how glad she is to be home. Then Elizur begs Samuel to toss him in the air and Hannah and Rachel run off to collect wildflowers by the brook. Marie leads Nathaniel in a little dance.

Mary stands for a moment gazing at the scene as waves of pleasure and fatigue rush over her. She considers all that has happened
to her since the attack. How much she has lost. And all she has gained. She looks at the front door. In a few minutes she will go inside to pick up her domestic work again—the long hours of toil for her family that both exhaust and satisfy her.

She closes her eyes and tips back her head, to let what is left of the afternoon sunshine fall on her face. For a moment, in her weariness, the sound of the children’s laughter reminds her of Indian women singing and she sees again the great circle fire at Wachusett. The white and purple ropes of wampum swing on the sachems’ chests. The women chant and sway. The warriors dance with feathers in their hair, their long braids thrashing. And the people raise their arms to the sky, their faces lit with a terrible, wild joy.