Flight of the Sparrow Read online

  Bess turns her head and Mary sees the childbed fear in her eyes—a fear she knows well. She has seen it on the faces of her sisters as they labored. She has felt it on her own. Everyone knows that bearing a child can carry a woman to her grave.

  She also knows that Bess has another reason to be afraid—a reason Mary dreads—for it is required of all women, wed and unwed, that they confess the name of their child’s father. They must do this during the most difficult moments of labor when the pain strips all self-control from them. Though she knows this is for the good of Bess’s soul, and will assure her a chance of salvation if she dies, Mary has no taste for the custom. She has endured the pangs of labor herself and knows that in the darkest hours of travail, a woman can be persuaded to reveal her most shameful secrets, to confess the vilest sin. A woman is not herself at that time, but only a vessel for the terrible power of her womb. Mary has no desire to press Bess for a revelation. The girl is without a husband—isn’t that shame enough?

  Gossip has it—and all Lancaster believes—that the child’s father is her master, Deacon William Park, that he likely forced himself on her and then threatened her with the lash to procure her silence.

  As the only woman present, it is Mary’s duty to extract a confession from the girl, yet she wishes with all her heart that it was not required. What good can come of it? Deacon Park is wealthy and proud, with a reputation as a righteous man. All the shame will fall on Bess’s thin shoulders. She will be branded a liar and temptress, and worse. She will be doubly condemned for trying to bring down a God-fearing and pious man.

  Soon a fire is leaping on the hearth and John has hung a kettle of water over it to boil. Edmund brings in armfuls of straw and he and John spread it over the floor. Edmund leaves and returns with a wedge of cheese and a pot of broth. He warms the broth while Mary rubs Bess’s back to ease her pain. She persuades the girl to walk with her, up and down across the room.

  “It will hurry the babe along,” Mary assures her, supporting Bess with an arm around her waist.

  They walk only a short time before Bess’s pains are too strong to continue. Mary eases her down onto the pallet and asks Edmund to leave. “There are duties I must perform,” she says. “Things that must be kept from the eyes of men.” He nearly runs out the door in his haste to escape these women’s mysteries. Mary quickly closes and bars it behind him.

  She whispers a prayer, begging God for strength, then kneels beside Bess. “The time has come, as you knew it would,” Mary says. “You must confess the name of your babe’s father.”

  Bess shakes her head and sets her teeth in a desperate grimace.

  “There is no protecting him, Bess. The truth will be revealed. You cannot save him, but you can save yourself from the flames of hell.”

  “I cannot,” she whispers, then moans and clutches her belly as another pang overwhelms her.

  “Just speak his name,” Mary says, “and you will have all the aid you need.” She leans over the girl and places her hands at the base of the swollen belly, pressing firmly. “I beg you, Bess, say it. All Lancaster knows this was your master’s doing, but you must declare it true.” When she does not answer, Mary presses harder. Bess’s eyes snap open and she screams.

  Edmund beats on the door with his fists. “Stop!” he cries. “For God’s sake, you must not torture her! Let me in!”

  Mary ignores him. “You must speak the name. Else I cannot help you.”

  Bess screams again. “’Tis no Christian thing you do, Mistress Rowlandson!” Edmund shouts. “This is a Devil’s game!”

  “The name of your master,” Mary says, the words scraping raw in her throat. “Just say it and be done with this.”

  Bess shakes her head violently, setting her teeth and closing her eyes, her whole body thrashing beneath Mary’s hands. Mary begins to lose her purchase, yet she knows she should not relent. Suddenly, Bess goes limp; her face grows dark red and seems to fold in on itself. She sobs; tears run from the corners of her eyes and Mary’s own eyes blur. Beyond the door, Edmund is silent.

  The girl’s mouth opens and an unholy wail escapes her. It has in it the sound of bones scraping across broken rocks, the sound wind makes as it rages through desolate winter forests; it makes Mary think of ice crusting on the doorsteps of burned houses. It makes her think of death.

  “Say it,” Mary whispers, but her resolve has turned to water. “Just speak his name. I beg you.” Her voice catches on a sob. Duty or not, she cannot continue.

  She takes her hands away and stands up. Silently, she berates herself as a poor, weak woman who does not have the resolve to do what is required. Yet she cannot make herself do more. She wants only to comfort Bess and ease her pain. Mary kneels again, puts her arm around her, and tells the girl she will not hurt her anymore.

  “Have no fear,” Mary says. “Your travail will soon be done.” Bess moans again. Mary opens the door and motions Edmund in. She helps Bess move higher on the pallet and asks Edmund to sit behind her, to support her head and torso while Mary helps to ease the child out. “Hold her well,” Mary says as she parts the girl’s knees and bends to her task.

  • • •

  Mary stares down at the wet infant wailing in her arms. A healthy, strong boy, with a sheath of wavy black hair slicked to his scalp. His skin is the color of well-steeped tea. It takes her a moment before she believes what she is seeing—the child’s father is clearly not Deacon Park.

  She looks up and meets Edmund’s eyes. He, too, has seen the boy’s dark skin and black hair. He smiles.

  “A boy,” Mary announces. “You have a son, Bess.”

  “Is he well?” The girl’s hands reach for the infant.

  “Aye,” Mary says. “’Tis a fine, lusty boy. Hear how he cries!”

  “I have named him already,” Bess whispers. “Silvanus.”

  It is unwise to name a child so soon; there are too many dangers to be faced in the first weeks after birth. But Mary has no heart to warn her. Let her enjoy what little peace she can.

  The girl lies back against her father, and closes her eyes. A long sigh escapes her; a faint smile turns up the corners of her mouth. Edmund gazes down at her and strokes her forehead in a gesture so tender Mary’s heart wrenches to see it.

  She turns her attention back to the babe, who squirms vigorously in her arms. There is still much to do: The afterbirth must be delivered; the birth cord must be cut and at just the right length. It must not touch the floor, or the boy will not be able to hold his water. Two eggs must be broken and stirred over hot embers and applied to a plaster for Bess to assure her future fertility. She must eat a poached egg and suckle the babe.

  Mary cuts the cord, cleans the child, swaddles him tightly, presents him to Bess and shows her how to help him latch onto her nipple. She makes the egg plaster and prepares the food Bess must eat. She washes the girl’s legs and private parts and collects the soiled rags to take home. When her tasks are finished and both Bess and the child have drifted off to sleep, she steps outside, where Edmund is sitting on the doorstep.

  “I thank you for your kindness to Bess,” he says. He offers her a pipe of tobacco and she realizes suddenly that she is exhausted. She takes the pipe and sits beside him, enjoying the tobacco’s bitterness on the back of her throat, the sweetness of the smoke as it threads into her lungs.

  “Did you know about the babe?” Mary does not look at him. “Did she tell you of his father?”

  He grunts softly. “She named no names, but spoke of an African slave who had been hired out to Deacon Park. Kind, she said. The kindest man who ever lived.”

  “Kind?” Mary asks. “What sort of kindness is it to get a child on her?”

  He is silent a moment. “I believe she loves him.”

  “Aye, love,” Mary says, nodding. So Bess consented to the union; she was not defiled after all. No wonder she hasn’t revealed the
man’s name. Mary takes a long draw on the pipe. She knows about love, felt it running through her own veins when she was but a few years older than Bess. It seems so long ago now.

  “The townsfolk will not be charitable to her,” she says. “Or him. The child is not only a bastard but the son of a slave.”

  “He is my grandson,” Edmund says in a hard voice.

  “Aye,” Mary says. She thinks of the tender way he soothed Bess, how he tried to protect her from interrogation. He is a kind man, Mary thinks, and for a moment she wants to tell him so. She has not known men to be kind. Her father was strong, courageous, often reckless, sometimes ruthless, but never kind. Her husband is a forceful man, righteous, insistent, and steadfast in his faith. He strives to be just and charitable, but kindness is not in his nature; his gentleness is confined to their marriage bed.

  Yet Edmund Parker, poor though he may be, appears to be deeply kind. Mary remembers his wife, Ruth, who died five years ago of a wasting disease. She was a hardworking, silent woman who had not joined the church. Mary had pitied her for being yoked to a man who could not make his farm prosper. But perhaps Ruth knew deeper satisfactions.

  On the far side of the field, John comes out of the woods. His hair is the color of straw in the sun. Mary thinks of the black-haired child inside the house, sleeping in his mother’s arms.

  She takes a final draw on the pipe and hands it back to Edmund. “I must go,” she says, rising. “I have many duties to attend.” She thinks of what she will likely find at home—her children ill-tended, the fire burned down to embers, a pot full of slick, gray porridge, her husband inconvenienced by her absence. She will have to tell him what she has witnessed—that Bess Parker has borne a black babe. It will shock him; it will shock all the good people of Lancaster.

  At Sabbath meeting, he will pray for the Lord’s mercy. He will beg God not to rain down His righteous anger upon the whole town. “Spare us from the wages of this woman’s sin!” he will cry. The congregation will murmur and tremble and whisper, “Amen.”

  Mary hurries down the lane to her house. In the west, the sun is sliding behind George Hill. The sky is the color of blood.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Bess must repent and make her confession before the whole congregation,” Joseph says. He is sitting by the hearth in the heavy oaken chair Mary’s father gave them when they married. His open Bible rests on his knees. “If she is to be restored, she must submit without complaint to her punishment.”

  Mary pictures Bess trembling as she is led out of the meetinghouse, bound to the whipping post, and stripped naked to the waist. How many lashes will the magistrates require? “She is but a child,” Mary protests. “Surely she has suffered enough.”

  Joseph gives her a disapproving look. “She is woman enough to bear a son,” he says. “And she has caused more suffering than she has endured. I do not understand you, wife. What confusion has disordered your mind since you attended this birth?”

  She wants to tell him she is perfectly sane, that any transformation she underwent was clarity, not confusion. But she knows he will regard such words as defiance. She keeps her head down and studies the bread dough as she kneads. It is brown and elastic, slightly warm under her palms.

  “And, Mary”—he closes the Bible and rises—“you must not visit the girl until she is restored.” When she does not answer, he crosses the room to stand behind her. “You have risked much in attending the birth. Further contact will taint you. Will taint all of us.”

  The skin between her shoulder blades stings suddenly as if pricked with quills. She wonders how he knew her intention. She forms the dough into a ball, covers it with a cloth and wipes her hands on her apron, focusing on her fingers as the coarse fabric scrapes away bits of dough, until she has control of herself. Finally she turns and looks at him.

  “Is there no place for Christian charity, then?” she asks, her voice quiet, measured. She must not threaten his authority. “Is not kindness a fruit of the Spirit, after all?”

  His eyes go hard and his jaw stiffens; she realizes she has gone too far. “It is not for a woman to decide such things,” he says. “You raise yourself too high. Your pride will be your undoing.”

  She knows that it is entirely proper for her husband to correct her, yet she resents it. Has always resented it. “I must see to my spinning,” she says, glancing at the small flax wheel in the dark northwest corner of the room.

  He wraps his hand around her wrist. “Hear me, Mary. I forbid you to visit the girl.”

  She assents without meeting his eyes, a submissive bob of her head, so that he will release her. But as she seats herself at the wheel and moves her fingers over the distaff, her face is bright with anger.

  • • •

  For sixteen years, Mary has striven to be a steadfast and godly wife to Joseph Rowlandson. She has submitted her will to his, accepted his corrections, and regularly joined her body to his in conjugal union. She was twenty when they wed, seventeen when she first met him. She will always remember opening the front door of her father’s new-built house and finding Joseph standing on the stoop: a sturdy, well-built man with wide shoulders, a long nose and dark hair that curled cunningly over his ears. He told her he was the town’s minister, come to call on her father.

  This was not surprising; it would serve any minister to make himself friend to John White, the wealthiest proprietor in Lancaster. He had spent years moving his family restlessly from one place to another, always seeking a new, more profitable opportunity. Mary was two when the family fled England in 1639, part of the Great Migration of Puritans to New England, seeking relief from the apostasy of King Charles. She remembers the crossing dimly: a haze of sunshine and black water, dirty white sails pasted to the sky, and the creaking, rocking hull.

  Her father settled the family in Salem; six years later he moved them to Wenham, where the number of children grew to nine. When, in 1653, he announced that he had purchased land in Lancaster, a frontier town deep in the wilderness, his eyes had flashed with excitement. But Mary had had to look away as she felt a great sinking in her chest and saw her mother’s face sag with fear. Only Mary’s married older sister and brothers had been able to stay in Wenham.

  Since coming to Lancaster, Mary had tried unsuccessfully to conquer her misery but, as she looked up at the minister that afternoon, something in his sharp blue gaze suggested that she might have prospects in Lancaster after all.

  • • •

  Now, for the first time in her married life, Mary defies her husband. On a warm, gray day when Joseph is called to the neighboring town of Groton to investigate a case of witchcraft, she packs a basket of food and carries it to the Parker farm. She finds Bess sitting in the yard, suckling Silvanus.

  The girl smiles when she sees her. Mary lowers the basket and admires the babe, brushing his cheek with the tip of her finger and tucking her thumb into his tiny fist. She is touched when Bess asks if she’d like to hold him.

  Mary cradles the small, warm body against her breasts, inhaling the milky perfume of his breath that rises from between his parted lips. She rocks him back and forth and closes her eyes. She remembers her own newborns so vividly that tears rise.

  “He’s a sweet babe,” she says, handing him back to Bess. “And you. How do you fare? Have you ample sustenance?”

  The girl’s face reddens and she briefly looks away, then back again. “You are the first to visit,” she whispers.

  “I have brought some food,” Mary says, removing the square of homespun covering the basket. “Cheese and bread. A slice of salted ham. Peas. Three good onions.”

  “Thank you.” Bess’s voice is ragged. Mary sits down and puts her arm around the girl’s shoulder.

  “What will become of me?” Bess whispers. “The goodwives scorn and shun me. They walk the other way when they see me in the lane.”

  Mary swallows against someth
ing sticky and hot in her throat. “They will receive you again if you confess and repent.”

  “I cannot.” Bess’s head drops lower; she will not look at Mary.

  “’Tis not so hard a thing,” Mary says gently.

  “But I cannot repent.” Bess looks up at her, her eyes dark with sorrow. “I would lie with him again tomorrow, if I could.”

  Mary can think of no satisfactory response to the girl’s sinful declaration. She is plainly demented with love. Mary recognizes the condition, for she was once demented herself with love for Joseph. She remembers how kind and attentive he was the spring after they moved to Lancaster, when her mother took to her bed, complaining of pains in her bowels and chest. Throughout her long dying, he came daily to offer prayers and Christian comfort. He often ate at their table. Mary became acutely aware of each time Joseph’s gaze fell on her. His glances caused something at the base of her spine to shiver with pleasure. When he departed, she felt strangely exhausted and yet she wanted to run all the way up the hill behind the house and spin in circles under the trees.

  Mary recalls lying next to her sister Elizabeth on their pallet in the chamber over the kitchen, telling her everything. She was in love, she said. She would not rest content until she became Joseph Rowlandson’s wife. She thought Elizabeth would sympathize because she had recently become engaged to Henry Kerley. Instead, her sister clucked her tongue and told Mary what a foolish girl she was. Love was not something that fell on a person out of a clear sky, but a warm affection that slowly grew from years of sharing life’s toils.

  Mary removes her arm from Bess’s shoulder and presses her hands together with sudden resolve. “You must not despair,” she says. “All will be well.” The guilt from disobeying her husband suddenly falls away and she feels a resolute determination to shower the girl with kindness and hope. “Fear not,” she says. “I will see to it myself.”