Flight of the Sparrow Read online

  CHAPTER THREE

  That summer, the land parches to dun under a sun that sears everything—crops, earth, even livestock. Wells dry up, obliging the men to dig new ones, but the water tastes brackish and bitter and dusty, as if God has dipped in a dirty finger. For the second year in a row the wheat harvest fails. Strange lights blaze in the night sky. Witches are found in pious congregations. Barns burst into flame and children drown. Entire families are struck down by the pox.

  Even Mary can discern these signs. Clearly, sin and darkness have ensnared New England in a deadly net. When she learns that Deacon Park has sold both Bess’s lover and her son, and that Bess herself has been bound out again—this time to a judge’s family in Salem—she is certain the day of God’s wrath is at hand.

  Thus she is not surprised when, in late June of 1675, word comes from Boston that Indians have attacked the village of Swansea, in Plymouth Colony. Pagan tribes have joined to form an army and are marching north into Massachusetts Bay. In mid-August Indians lay siege to Quabaug, a frontier town west of Lancaster. A fortnight later, on a hot Sabbath morning, they attack farms in the north sector of Lancaster itself, butchering George Benet and all his animals outside his barn and leaving Lidia widowed with five babes and no relation to come to her aid. Joseph Farrar meets the same fate. His poor wife is in a stupor for weeks, abandoning her children to fend for themselves. The MacLoud family is slain in their dooryard as their house burns before their eyes. The Indians do not even spare four-year-old Hannah. Two days later, a violent storm rips trees from the ground and ruins the fields of wheat and maize.

  Weekly, Joseph’s brow glistens with the exertions of his preaching. He cries out and smacks the air with his fists. God, he reminds the congregation, does not hesitate to rebuke those He loves. Has He not visited earthquake, fire, and plague upon the Bay Colony? Is not Lancaster’s disobedience as great as any of the Bay towns?

  By November, the Indian situation has grown so desperate that the selectmen consider enclosing the entire town. Someone calculates that it will require a fence eight feet tall and twelve miles long and they abandon the plan. Instead, the largest homes are designated garrison houses. Two men are appointed to build a stockade around the Rowlandson house, providing a measure of safety but spoiling Mary’s view from the dooryard. Where she was once able to see trees blanketing the hills beyond neat fields of wheat and flax, now she faces only stout posts set close together like the brown teeth of a great beast.

  Winter comes, and an icy wind sweeps the hills and cracks the branches of trees. Rain falls and freezes on the doorstep. One night the full moon darkens and turns red as if drenched in blood. Cakes refuse to rise and bake into dense dry bricks. The sparrow no longer sings in its cage. Jonas Fairbanks reports that he heard the blaring of unholy trumpets early one Saturday morning when he walked on George Hill. Thomas Hosmer tells of the birth of a calf in nearby Groton whose head was so monstrously deformed the animal could not stand. Witches’ stones crash against the Sawyer house three nights in a row and it is said that the dung of a passing crow struck a man dead on the Concord Turnpike.

  In January, everyone in Lancaster is ordered to take shelter nightly in their designated garrisons. Mary’s sisters and their families are assigned to the Rowlandson garrison, as are their closest neighbors, the Joslins and the Kettles. By day everyone goes about their duties warily, the way a farmer harvests his ripened grain with one eye cast toward a fretful sky. At night, more than forty people crowd into the house, bringing their blankets and food stores and little else, for there is no room to accommodate furniture. Mary’s household, which she strives to order daily, becomes a place of noise and disarray.

  In early February, Joseph tells Mary that he has decided to travel to Boston and beg the governor to send troops for their protection. Mary tries to dissuade him. The night before his departure, as they lie in bed, she pleads with him. “Can you not wait till spring?” She tries to keep her voice low, mindful that the bed curtains do little to muffle sound. She can hear the snores and sighs of her relatives and neighbors who sleep on pallets only a few feet away. “’Tis the dead of winter and travel to Boston is arduous.”

  “Mary, hush.” He rolls to face her. Even in the dark she can see that his forehead has knit into a frown. He strokes her cheek, trying to gentle her as she does the children when they are fretful. “You will infect others with your fears. You must be strong in the Lord.”

  “Send Lieutenant Kerley in your stead! Surely he is more suited to the task.” She whispers the words, hoping that her sister Elizabeth is not awake to hear Mary offer her husband in place of her own.

  “Henry will go. Did I not tell you? He has already agreed to accompany me. But in Boston they will be more persuaded by a minister than a yeoman soldier.”

  Mary struggles to still her tongue, to submit her will to his. Yet fear assaults her again, sliding up her back like a cold snake. “And what are we to do if the Indians attack while you are gone?”

  He clicks his tongue irritably. “Do you think I would leave if I thought that likely? The very reason I go is to insure that we will not be attacked.”

  “But if we are—”

  He cuts her off, and tells her what she already knows. “I do not leave you without protection. The house is well garrisoned. John Divoll and John Kettle are here. Abraham Joslin, John MacLoud. My own nephew—”

  “Thomas is but a boy,” Mary protests.

  “Hush you, now! He is nineteen and more skilled with a musket than I am.”

  Again Mary strives for silence. Again she fails. “Can you not wait until the house is fully secured?” She thinks of the flankers the men have begun building at the corners of the house, spaces a man with a musket can squeeze into and sight the enemy through long vertical slits.

  She hears him sigh and realizes their conversation is over. “The Lord will be your safekeeping, Mary,” Joseph whispers. She feels his warm breath against her ear. “Sleep now. You must trust always in Him.”

  She nods yes, her forehead lightly brushing his chest. She breathes in his warmth, his familiar scent. Joseph is her husband, the head of her house, as Christ is head of the church, and she owes him loving obedience. She must trust him. Though she sleeps little, she says no more that night.

  • • •

  The sun is rising as Mary follows her husband into the yard the next morning. Joss has brought the bay mare from the barn and is stroking her neck. Elizabeth’s husband, Henry, is already mounted on his black gelding. A sudden gust of wind sweeps down from the ridge behind the house, and Mary shivers, for it is plainly an ill omen. She sees Joseph glance at her, and forces a smile of encouragement. She does not want him to discern that her bodily humors have turned to vinegar.

  Elizabeth comes out of the house and goes at once to Henry, who is shivering in his thin uniform. Mary sees that Joseph, too, is shivering—though with cold or excitement, she cannot tell. She takes his hand, but fleetingly, for the journey to Boston is long and grueling, and he and Henry must ride in daylight because of the Indian menace. He mounts the mare.

  “Godspeed you,” Mary manages to say, shielding her eyes against the brightening sky so that she can make out his features.

  “We will return before the week is out,” he promises, leaning down. “The Lord will keep you. Trust in His mercy.”

  She nods, accepting his instruction, knowing he means to comfort her. Yet, as the men guide their horses up the bank and into the lane, Mary has the evil thought that she will never again see her husband alive. She feels a wave of self-pity that she fears will dribble out of her all day in small, bitter drops.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  For four days Lancaster waits for Joseph and Henry to return with soldiers, but no word comes from Boston. The women and children keep to the house. Mary goes about her duties with the other women, tending the fire, scrubbing floors, washing clothes, watching over the
children, preparing food. They make porridges of dried peas and beans, stews of boiled parsnips and ham, loaves of bannock bread and pans and pans of biscuits. There are so many in the garrison that they have to set two boards at midday. Everyone eats quickly from common trenchers; even the children are subdued.

  Mary minds her own children vigilantly, keeping a singular eye on six-year-old Sarah. Marie is now ten, sturdy and obedient, stalwart as her father. Joss is two years older, rangy and impulsive, desperately needing to be put to work. There is never enough for him to do in this confined space. Mary often sets him to cutting firewood at the back door, yet his liveliness is never sated.

  Each night, after their day’s labors are done and the children asleep, the women sit together while the fire burns down. They mend and knit and talk of their fears. On the third night, Priscilla Roper says something that turns Mary’s blood to ice.

  “Do you not suspicion,” Priscilla says, “that Bess Parker’s sin has brought this menace upon our town?”

  Elizabeth speaks before Mary is able to collect her tumbling thoughts. “Has not Bess gone to Salem these many months now? We cannot fault her for our present trials.”

  “But her father still lives among us,” Priscilla says. “It is said he has turned to witchcraft.”

  “It has not been proven against him,” Mary says sharply. “He has simply done what anyone would do—seek to protect his child and grandchild.”

  Priscilla casts a skeptical glance. “When was he last at worship? When did he last sit at the Lord’s table?”

  “I know not,” Mary says. “But his absence does not make him a witch.”

  “Perhaps not, but we dare not ignore the signs.”

  Mary wants to say that they have long ignored signs of injustice and intolerance, but she holds her tongue. Such talk will only set her against her neighbors and sisters, and no woman in a frontier town can afford such disaffection. They depend on one another for their very lives—especially in these perilous times.

  “The girl’s sin was severe,” Ann Joslin says. “Surely we have not forgotten the child was a Negro?”

  “Aye,” says Elizabeth Kettle, nodding.

  “Does that make him less her child?” Mary asks. “Does it make her heart less desolate when he is lost to her? Think on it. What would we feel were one of ours sold into slavery?” And then Mary says what she has not spoken before outside Joseph’s presence. “If the Indian menace is indeed the chastening hand of God upon Lancaster, I warrant it is not brought down by Bess’s sin, but by our own insufficiency of compassion toward her.”

  The women instantly fall silent and none of them—not even Elizabeth or Hannah—will look at her. Finally Elizabeth coughs and, to relieve the awkwardness in the room, begins to speak of Indians. She declares they are without mercy. She says that her husband heard some ghastly particulars when he was in Concord the past week. “’Tis said in Swansea they slew seven men and cut off their heads and set them on poles in the wilderness. And I have heard it whispered that in another place they bound all the men together and made them watch as they butchered their cattle and swine before their eyes.”

  “They kill our animals to provoke us,” Priscilla says. “To unhinge our minds. They know how we prize them.”

  Mary nods, for she too has heard of this cruel Indian practice.

  “That is not the worst of it.” Elizabeth lets the linen napkin she is hemming fall into her lap and strokes it, as if it were a purring cat from which she seeks comfort. “They delight in torture. It be both sport and pleasure to them.”

  Ann Joslin moans and Mary feels her hair rise, though it is safely tucked beneath her cap.

  “Some they cut off their hands and feet,” Elizabeth continues. “Some they take their scalps and flaunt them as trophies. Once they have exhausted their cruelties, they dispatch the men with a blow to the head. And before they kill the women, they defile them.”

  Mary is frightened, yet something perverse in her makes her want to hear more, to probe each horror. She bites the inside of her lip hard, to still her querying tongue. “If the Indians come to Lancaster,” she says firmly, “I will never let them take me alive. I would rather die than subject myself to their depravities.”

  “Pray God that we all be spared,” Ann Joslin whispers and folds her hands over the unborn child that has already grown large within her.

  “I doubt they will come,” Hannah says. “Why would they come in winter, when they must wallow in snow? If they attack Lancaster, I am sure they will wait until spring, when they can strike quickly. And, in any case, soon we shall be well defended.”

  “Let us hope so,” Mary says. “For I have not heard that Indians govern themselves by reason, let alone good sense.”

  The women fall silent. For months, they have worried their memories with the August terrors as one dabs at a sore that will not heal. They have repeated the details over and over: the bloated, mutilated bodies, the charred timbers of the MacLoud house, the poor fatherless Benet children. Their horror is like a blaze that singes the hairs on a woman’s arm when she stirs the pottage.

  When the fire dies down, Mary banks it and the women retire—Mary to the bedstead where her daughters are already curled together in sleep, her sisters and neighbors to their pallets. Though it is late and she is exhausted, Mary does not sleep but lies staring at the shadows that move across the curtains. She hears children’s gurgles and sighs as they sleep, the drowsy murmurs of adults. She wonders how Bess Parker fares. She thinks about Indians and their fierce pagan ways, their disquieting stealth. Even now they might be skulking through the woods nearby. Or laying a trap to butcher Joseph and Henry on their way home from Boston.

  It begins to snow and with the snow comes sleet, small hard flakes that tick against the windows and clot on the doorstep. Mary whispers a prayer of protection as her mind finally empties into sleep.

  • • •

  The wind comes up before dawn, whining against the roof and clapboards, waking Mary from a troubling dream in which Joseph has lost his way in the wilderness. She sees him caught fast in a tangle of undergrowth beneath great trees while savage beasts and Indians circle him in ever-tightening rings. She can do nothing to save him, but stands watching while he cries out for mercy.

  She sits up, praying that God has not sent the dream as a prophecy. Marie lies sprawled on the far side of the bed. Sarah whimpers in her sleep. Mary pushes the curtains aside, ignoring the familiar catch in her back and knees as she stands. She relieves herself in the chamber pot and quickly puts on her bodice and skirts over her shift. She takes her apron and pocket from the hook by the bed and straps them on before making her way to the hearth, where the dogs reluctantly rise and make room for her. The fire has burned down to embers and it takes a long time to coax it back to life, time spent kneeling on frozen stone and carefully rearranging the coals, blowing and feeding strips of bark to the embers to rekindle the flame.

  She is still crouched on the hearth when she hears the first shriek. She tells herself it is but the wind against the flankers and adds another handful of sticks to the small fire. Then she hears it again and knows it is not the wind, for the shriek is followed by musket fire.

  The dogs lift their heads, ears pricked. Mary gets to her feet, praying it is merely a hunter from another garrison, tracking deer in the fresh snow. But there comes another shot, and another, like the sound of dry twigs snapping under a heavy foot. She moves to the window, stepping carefully over her sleeping neighbors, and uses her fingernail to scrape frost from one of the small diamond panes. Her view is distorted by a ripple in the glass, but the black smoke rising beyond the snow-topped stockade is clear enough. It comes from the Kettles’ house. Mary takes a step back, pressing her hand over her mouth, looking around the dark room. Everyone is still asleep.

  The sound of muskets grows louder and closer. She tries to remember what Jo
seph said must be done if the Indians attack, but her mind is as blank as the snow in the yard. At her feet, a pile of blankets stirs and Hannah’s husband, John Divoll, emerges. She can make out his features only dimly in the half-light, but she sees him rub his forehead and cock his head toward the sound.

  “They have come,” she says, whispering because she cannot seem to make her voice work properly. “The Indians are upon us.”

  He scrambles to his feet. “Awake!” he bellows, already pulling on his breeches and coat. “The enemy has come!” He heads for the cabinet where the guns are stacked.

  People tumble out of their blankets and rise from their pallets. Row sets up an alarmed chirping. Mary sees Ann Joslin on her feet, clutching a struggling Beatrice in her arms. From the parlor come the sounds of an infant’s wail and a man barking orders.

  Hannah appears at her side, sweeping a tangle of dark hair from her face, pulling a blanket around her. “Mary?” she says, her voice catching at the back of her throat. Mary can think of nothing to say, no sisterly word of comfort or solace.

  Joseph should be here, she thinks, and a dart of anger jabs her throat. She scans the room for Joss as she hurries to the bedstead, finds Sarah still asleep, Marie awake and huddled in a nest of blankets.

  “Come,” Mary says, throwing back the covers. “Put on your clothes, girls. Hurry.”

  “Are we going out?” Sarah frowns up at her.

  “Nay, not yet,” Mary says. “But we must be ready in case we are required to make an escape.”

  “Escape to where?” Marie asks. “Why?”

  “The Lord will guide and protect us,” Mary says, knowing it does not answer her questions, yet it is all she has to offer. “Hurry now. Make ready.”

  Musket balls rattle like hail against the house and men are shouting and slamming closed the shutters. What little light was inside is gone now, the rooms plunged into blackness. She searches her heart for hope, snatches at the fact that the Indians have not yet broken into the house. Perhaps Joseph, at this very moment, is close to Lancaster with the troops that will drive off the enemy.