Sorceress (10 page)

The debate went on but Hoosac had decided. The tribe had no quarrel with the English hereabouts. They would not commit themselves, not yet anyway. They would wait and see.

The sachem’s decision was not heard by everyone. The crowd in the long house had been thinning. The Wampanoag warrior and Coos, the sachem’s brother, had already left and other young men had gone with them, slipping off into the night, determined to join the fight.

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Life went on as usual through summer towards the autumn. We hoed and cared for the plants growing in the gardens: corn, pumpkin, beans. We made mats from the bulrushes, prepared hides for clothing and moccasins, smoked and dried fish and flesh for the winter months. But the work was done without the usual leavening of humour. The mood in the gardens was subdued, as it was in the village. When the men were away fishing or hunting, the women went about their tasks almost in silence, hardly noticing what they were doing, each one lost in endless calculation of what this war could cost them. Even the children ceased their chatter and playing and looked to their tasks scaring crows, carrying water, picking pests off the growing corn, for every ear grown and safely garnered was insurance against hunger and want.

Even when the men were about, the atmosphere barely lightened. The hunt returning was generally a time for feasting, a time of plenty, but now there was little rejoicing. We dried and smoked the meat the men brought us and put it into storage pits, while the men clustered in groups, talking in low tones.

On past summer evenings, after we had eaten, Black Fox and Speckled Bird would sometimes play together outside our wigwam. He had taught her knuckle bones, a game with five stones I remembered from home, showing her how to throw them up and catch them on the back of her hand. He liked to carve things and had fashioned dolls for her, or made stick figures for her village, helping her mark out paths with the pretty stones and shells that she collected. Speckled Bird’s village changed with the season. Now a palisade of sharpened sticks bristled round it and a war post stood in the centre, a squat stump of wood, stained red as if by blood.

Black Fox rarely found time to play with his sister now. Most nights saw him slipping from our wigwam to join other firesides where the talk was of war. In the daytime he went to help the men who were looking to their weapons, making and fletching arrows, working the blades of their tomahawks on whetstones, grinding the edges to wicked keenness, keeping everything in sharp repair.

All summer long it was as if a storm was brewing. The war flickered like distant lightning, playing across the mountains to the south, to the west, to the north, then all around. News of the fighting growled in our ears like thunder. Each day the atmosphere grew more ominous. The war was coming upon us, like it or not.

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20

War trail

It came at the time of the green corn harvest when the first corn was brought in from the gardens. The kernels were plump and fat with milky sweetness and were roasted and boiled with fowl and venison. Plums and grapes and different berries were mixed for a pudding with corn meal and maple syrup. It was a time of plenty, a celebration of earth’s bounty.

Coos, the sachem’s brother, turned this time of festival into a war dance.

He came back from the fighting in the south a honed and hardened warrior with a fresh scar seaming his face from ear to chin. He had his war band with him. They were honoured, given the best place at the feast, the choicest of meats. After the feasting was over, he stood up, arms outstretched, and addressed the men about him.

‘My brothers, I bring greetings from Metacom ... ’

He went on to describe Metacom’s triumphant progress and his own part in it: the soldiers killed, the towns burned, the settlements sacked. Black Fox leaned forward, drinking in every word he said. Coos called for warriors to stand up and join him. First one man, then another moved to form a circle. He asked who else would come to him. Black Fox stood up to join the dance.

‘You cannot join! You are too young!’ I called out to him but he walked away as if he had not heard me. I turned to Jaybird. ‘You must stop him.’

‘It is too late. He has been accepted.’

Jaybird rose from where he was sitting.

‘
You
cannot!’

I held his arm, but he shook me off. He was moving away from me now.

‘I must! Would you see me dishonoured? Shamed by my own son, a boy of barely fourteen summers? If he is prepared to take the war trail, I cannot stand by like an old one.’

A deep-throated shout went up as Jaybird joined the other men, for he was a skilled hunter and tracker and had proved himself a courageous and cunning fighter on the war trail against the Mohawks. In normal times I would have been proud of him, but now I rued his prowess and wish him lame, sick, weakly – anything to keep him here with me.

I saw my anguish reflected on the faces of other women as their men rose to leave their hearths and fires and gathered at the centre of the village.

Flames grew and sparks flew up into the dark night sky. The
powwaws
shook their turtle rattles, an empty, ticking, scratchy sound, and then the drums started, beating out a steady and strong rhythm. The war dance was starting. The ground shook with the thump and stamp of feet. The firelight shone on the dipping, swaying dancers, turning their sweating skin and muscle to burnished copper. Then the chanting began as each warrior added his song to the rhythm set by the drums beating and the feet stamping. War cries rang out, inhuman shrieks, like the calls of owl or eagle. Coos raised a ball-headed club with a great spike in it, smeared with vermilion as if blood was already upon it, and struck at a quintain set in the centre of the circle. Other men smote the post in turn, while still others held their hands to the sky to bring down the spirits.

Jaybird and Black Fox merged in with the others. I could not tell any man apart in the whirl and turn. They were all caught in the drumming and chanting, blind to those outside them, moving as one thing, like a monstrous snake or serpent. Women and children could only stand and watch in resignation, for they knew that once joined, there could be no leaving. The only honourable way to quit the dance was death.

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The dancing went on far into the night but I was too sick at heart to watch further. I withdrew to our wigwam and lay alone on our sleeping platform, gathering the furs about me, but I could not sleep. Speckled Bird woke, wanting to know what the noise was. I took her in my arms and held her to me, rocking her to sleep to the rhythm of the war dance.

Jaybird came to me as day was dawning. I nearly cried out; he had to put a hand over my mouth. For a moment I failed to recognise him in the darkness of the wigwam lit only by the embers of the fire. He was stripped for war. His head was shaved save for a single crest of hair running from front to back; his face was painted half red, half black. I would not have known him except for the gorget he wore about his neck. I had made it as a wedding gift to him, threading beads and shells together. The half-silver coin at the centre glittered against his throat as he bent to touch Speckled Bird’s sleeping head.

He gathered me up and held me in his arms and kissed me for one last time. I wanted to whisper my love to him, to beg, to implore, to plead with him, but I remained silent. My heart was too full, words would make the tears spill, and I would not shame him by weeping.

Black Fox was outside, his head shaved also, his eyes ringed with black like a raccoon mask. The sight of him, I must confess, caused my tears to spill. He was just a boy and much too young to go with the warriors. In my eyes he was still a child, my child, but I knew that I could not keep him. My woman’s words would not be heeded. I could not make him stay, he would follow anyway. All I could do was give him my blessing.

I might never see them in life again, but they left without a word being spoken. To break custom would be a bad omen and among Jaybird’s people there is no word for farewell.

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21

Dream time

I slept alone, with Speckled Bird on the opposite couch from me. At first she slept beside me, but I disturbed her with my dreaming. I did not dream of Jaybird and Black Fox, their trail was closed to me. Instead I dreamt of Beulah.

I had dreamed of it before. Dark dreams of ruination. Grass growing on tracks which had not seen traffic these years past. It had become a desert place, the forest growing all about, busy taking the village back. Saplings thrust through floor and fallen beams; vine and creeper slowly engulfing the houses.

I had wondered often and pondered long on the fate of those I had left there. Over the years I had dreamed of them also. I had woken in their worlds.

I had walked in from the muddy Boston street, the air laden with sea, stepped into
Jonah Morse, Apothecary
and sniffed the air, bracing as medicine, laced with camphor, liquorice and sulphur. I had caught the scent of rosemary and sage blowing through from the physick garden planted behind the shop. I had heard the bell ring behind me, seen Martha look up from the counter, surprised to see no one before her, her green eyes as sharp as ever, but her dear face older, more lined, her cheeks withered and puckered like the skin on a winter-stored pippin. Just then Jonah would come from his dispensary, his white shirtsleeves protected to the elbow by black guards. He appeared smaller, bent in the shoulders, and peering about him through small wire-rimmed eyeglasses, wondering what, or who, had called him from his scales and his furnace and his bubbling alembics. Martha would shake her head at him and hurry to secure the door that had blown open for no reason.

That is what I’d seen in my dreams before, but now the shop stood empty. Dust lay on the floor and lined the shelves. Where Jonah and Martha were I could not tell, but I feared that death had claimed both of them. I woke with my face wet, for I would have liked to see Martha again. She had been good to me and I had loved her well.

I settled to sleep again and my dreaming eye turned to John and Sarah Rivers. I saw them prosperous, their children grown. Sarah stood at her window, staring through glass, and I knew her thoughts were on Rebekah.

I had dreamed of Rebekah before. Seen her as a woman with growing children about her. Seen her with Tobias in the house he had built for her. A substantial dwelling, two storeys, wide-fronted, the boarding beginning to weather, the heavy shingled roof sloping down at the back. He built as solidly as ever. Stout barns flanked the house. They lived now in a fair valley, with lush land all about them, a mill turning on the wide restless river. I saw Tobias standing on a wharf, watching as wide flat-bottomed barges laden with timber were seized by the swift current and taken downstream. The river carried his wealth.

I dreamed of Rebekah now. But this dream was different. The strongly built dwelling stood shuttered fast. No smoke rose from the broad brick chimney. From the outhouses came a plaintive lowing, cows in need of milking, but no one stirred from the house or crossed the empty yard. Scorching and charring patched the cladding, showing that the house had been under attack. There was tension in the air, a sense of waiting. Birds called sharply from the forest, first one, then another, a blackbird’s dinning, a blue jay’s empty chatter.

The whole scene lay bathed in the first light of a golden autumn morning. The forest, crowding near, lay as yet in darkness. Figures crept from the margin, first one man, then another. They kept to the shadows, then spread out. Some moved towards the barns to steal away horses and cattle. Others held brands and brushwood ready to set fires at the base of the wooden house and finish the burning. A few snaked close to the ground, holding hatchets and tomahawks to hack at the doors and shutters.

At some unseen signal, panels slid back high in the barns and suddenly the front of the house bristled with musket barrels. Smoke puffed amid sharp reports sounding like the cracking of dry branches. The Indians were caught by surprise in a murderous crossfire. First one man fell and then another. The answering arrows pattered harmlessly as the shutters shot back into place.

The Indians regrouped for another attack and began to creep forward again, dragging burning brushwood with them, but again they came under fire from the barns. The leader signalled retreat. His men fell back, but one lay trapped behind a water butt.

Before they had seemed a group of strangers, but now I could see all. I could see close and far, as one can in dreams. I knew who the trapped one was. I had carried him in my womb, I had loved him and guided him, watched him grow from boy towards manhood. Now he lay in the dust, his black-painted raccoon eyes wide, panting like an animal, the dust stirring with each shallow breath. He looked small and slight. Too young to be here, too young to fight. A life scarce begun was over. We are sorry to kill you, little brother ...

I would have done anything, given anything to save him. ‘Be careful what you wish,’ that’s what my grandmother had taught me, but I forgot her counsel and summoned all my power. I sent myself out to him, but another was there before me. Jaybird had turned back. I saw his face painted half red, half black. He came running, drawing fire to himself. The first musket ball hit him in the shoulder, the second in the back. A third spun him round again while the boy stayed where he was, as still as a rabbit before a stoat, his eyes rimmed with white within the raccoon black paint. I went out to him again, lending him my strength to take flight. At last he stirred. While the musket balls puffed up the dust around him, he got to his feet and fled.

Jaybird stumbled on into another volley of fire. He went down on his knees before them, arms flung out, head flung back, then he fell to the ground. The fleeing boy looked back, raccoon eyes turning. He would have run to his father, the fallen one, but one of the other warriors caught Black Fox and dragged him away to the forest.

All was silent for a while. Then, first in ones and twos, then in a crowd, men came from the house. They clapped each other on the back, laughing and grinning, filled with the joy of being alive while others lay dead. They deployed themselves among the fallen, kicking this one, turning that one, as if these were animals killed for sport. One or two took out knives and knelt to the bodies, bent on taking trophies. A woman ran out then, commanding them to stop. She was tall and slender. I knew that it was Rebekah. I sent my spirit out to her. One of the men was standing over Jaybird with sword raised as if to hack off his head. I would not see my husband despoiled.

She went over and bent to look closer at the warrior stretched on the ground before her. Bidding the man hold his hand, she stood to address all of them. She was a woman of substance and standing; her word was respected. Under her direction, the dead were taken and left at the edge of the forest.

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I knew that the dream was true. I was in mourning even before Black Fox came back carrying the gorget from his throat.

‘He died well.’ Black Fox put the necklet into my hand. The silver was tarnished, the beads and feathers soaked, dyed black with his blood. ‘It is for you. I took it so you would know. I am a man now, mother. I will take care of you and Speckled Bird.’

His voice broke over the last words. He was too full of grief to say more. I cried, weeping openly. Such displays of emotion disturbed him, but he did his best to comfort me. We stood together, united in sorrow for a father who had been greater than any other and a husband dearer than life itself.