Flight of the Sparrow (23 page)

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.

•   •   •

Q
uinnapin 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?”

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.

•   •   •

I
n 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.

•   •   •

F
rom 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.

•   •   •

I
n 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 charred 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.

•   •   •

M
ary 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.