With no one to watch her, Lonnie had fallen into the coals. Her gown had caught fire, and though she still breathed, there was not one place of whole skin upon her. Allsy, dead and pocked with pustules, was not so nightmarish as what lay smoking and moaning before us. She wailed, her air rasping and dragging in and out as she suffered upon the floor. They placed a wet blanket upon her to soothe the burns. Voices around me rose in prayer, simple, anguished supplication for an end to agony. Rachael threw herself down next to her little sister and wept, claiming it to be her fault, beating her chest with her fists, tearing at her hair until Reverend Johansen had to raise her and take her away.
In the midst of all the people gathered, talking and weeping, I was felled by the breaking of a stick across my back. Birgitta picked up another and laid her art across my shoulders with such fury I soon curled up on the ground as she cried out, “You were supposed to watch her! Because of you we had to come to the common. This is your doing, you wretched devil!”
I hardened my face to the burning behind my eyes and did not shed a tear. Someone stopped her, but not before she had brought me to a place where I wished to die. I groaned as hands lifted me to my feet. I held the pocket in my grasp. Lukas’s father said, “There will be no more beatings today. You will sleep this night at our house. We will not weary our Lord with needless cruelty for which we will surely repent on the morrow.”
Patience took my hand and, following the Newhams, led me to their home. She put me into her bed and, after everyone else slept, held me close and cradled me like a babe. I did not cry. I felt neither sad nor hurt. I did not know then that I could not cry.
“Ressie?” she whispered. “Take heart. Try to be brave.”
“Patey, let me sleep. I will be good tomorrow.”
“You are good, now.”
I awoke snuggled next to Patey, so sore I could not move. She slept amongst barrels of provisions and boxes of implements. It was not luxurious but it had no goats. As I lay there, she slipped from the bed and tipped to the window where a little opening separated this room from the next, lifted the latch and pulled in the shutter. I saw Lukas lean his head through the opening and kiss Patience right on the lips! Not only did he kiss her but she kissed him in return. They kissed each other, murmuring, their faces touching or almost touching when they spoke, their lips all but nibbling at each other as a horse would search your hand for sweet carrots. I had seen Ma and Pa kissing in such a way, but any boy that I chose to love would have to settle for holding hands, and even then only if his were washed. Patey lay back beside me.
“Do you love Lukas?” I asked in the softest whisper I could manage.
“What are you doing awake?”
“I could not help it. Why were you doing that? Do you love him?”
“Kissing him keeps other things at bay. I promise and yet fend him off.”
“Does he want to marry you? Does he have enough money to get us home?”
“His parents own me. I could no more become his wife than I could fly.”
“Did he want to see up your skirt?”
“Where did you learn such a thing?”
“The women on the ship said that a fellow might give a girl something for a glimpse under a farthingale.”
“I think you should go back to sleep.”
“Are you going to kiss him again when I do?”
“Not tonight. I tossed a pebble at his sister so she will be watching; he dares not be caught. His parents would have him flogged. He burns with lust in his private chamber. Go to sleep.”
It was not difficult to follow her order. I closed my eyes, imagining Lukas feeling remorse for kissing Patience. I smiled. It was good that he should suffer for love.
* * *
We buried Lonnie, the first of our dead, in a place beside the church house. After that, the reverend marked off a place and called it consecrated, where others would lie beside her in days to come. It did not take long for a second grave to follow. Four days after Lonnie fell into the fire, Goodwife Fischer was found having gone to her eternal rest one morning. Goody Fischer had been a frail, toothless woman who came with one of the families though she was no relative of theirs. No one cried for her.
The third death was a young man full of vigor and health. Foster Simon was his name. He was an apprentice carpenter and had gone with other men to deep woods outside our clearing to hunt a tree to make a table and chest. His father and brother accompanied the party and worked at felling it, but they started for home to bring others to help. Halfway there with his brother perched upon his shoulders, Foster remembered leaving his axe at the base of the tree. He put his brother down and sauntered back down the new-cut path.
When he did not return for the midday meal, the men called for him as they walked, and joked that he had probably fallen asleep. They found him, flesh bitten and torn, his neck broken. A bear had savaged the tree and huge scars on it coated with blood marked the place of Foster’s death. I stood at the grave as they laid that young man to his rest. My arms and neck still bore yellowing bruises from the beating Birgitta had given me. As they started filling dirt upon him, his blood seeping through the winding cloth, I thought I would rather be in that cool ground beside him than working here.
Though Mistress kept me busy working, I searched out wildflowers and laid them daily upon the three graves. I did not know Goody Fischer, and Lonnie was so bothersome that I felt little but sorrow for the suffering she had endured and some gratitude that I did not have to sleep next to her. Foster had been little older than August, was both a young man and a boy, a stranger and yet part of this group to which I belonged. He had once helped me with a load of firewood and he knew “If I Wast a Blackbird.” When Foster had smiled, two cunning dimples puckered his cheeks like an overstuffed pillow. I wished I had had a chance to kiss those dimples, I thought with a sigh. Oh, how handsome he had been.
One day, I lay down upon Foster’s grave and stared at the sky. I patted the soil beneath me and felt of him lying there, snug and warm as if tucked in for the night. Clouds drifted overhead like a flock of animals, bunching and parting, bunching and parting. I knew then what Patience meant, for I knew I loved Foster Simon. My chest ached. I would never marry for my own true love was dead, just as in the blackbird song. My heart’s wings would ever flutter over his heart, and the beauty of our tragic love would rise above any other love ever known. I sighed with the soaring emotion of it. Love so true and pure!
The next day I visited him and sat at the end of the mound over his feet. I swept clear a place with my hands and took great care to set stones upon the grave in the shape of a heart to show him my love. I heard Birgitta call and I stood to leave. “I will come back to see you soon,” I said, brushing gravel and bits of dried weed from my skirt. “I wish you weren’t dead. I will come and keep you company. Good day. And, I love you.”
“Mary!”
“Coming, Birgitta! I love you, Foster.”
Next Meeting Day, Reverend Johansen called to me, so I sat near him. “Mary, do you understand what death is? And do you understand what it means to let the dead rest in peace?”
Against my will my lower lip pushed itself out. “Yes, sir, I do most certainly.”
“I’m speaking of Master Foster Simon. You have decorated his resting place and visited many times, yet you must know his soul is not there, and naught remains but his earthly form, turned already to dust. I ask you to let his spirit rest.”
“Does my being there bother him, sir?”
“We don’t know what the spirits know, but I think a fortnight of mourning is enough.”
“I love him.”
Reverend Johansen said nothing but smiled in a small way. “Child, if the dead do know, he will be warmed by that knowledge. You can carry that feeling in your heart and let him rest in the ground.”
“I will not visit him any longer.” Oh, my heart lurched with the agony of that terrible declaration. “I will still love him, though, with all my hea
rt, forever.”
“I think that is wisest,” he said. “As for love, what you know now will grow and fashion itself anew each time you press your heart against the thought. I pray God that you will know the best that love has to offer when you are a woman grown.”
I walked from the church and went inside the Haskens’ empty house, for they were all still at the common meal. I took the iron poker from the fireplace and, using the tip of it, scratched the initials F S into the doorpost at a height that my hand would touch as I went in and out. The Haskens were tall. They would not glance down and see Foster’s initials carved there for me.
CHAPTER 10
May 9, 1730
On the day the goats got out, only five feet of open space in our garrison wall remained to be filled with posts. I hated for it to be finished for it closed up the greenwood around about us. That day I was glad for it, though, for we had dozens of goats all running hither and thither through the houses and commons, tearing up gardens and messing on floors, making a stir on the morning’s placid air. No one knew how, before the break of day, every fence in the compound had opened and every barnyard animal got loose. With the help of anyone who could wave an apron and chase them, seven of our goats returned to the fenced yard.
I discovered the tracks of one goat led through the garrison opening and into the woods. I ran to get Birgitta and show her that the goat was lost. I hoped that she’d say it was no use looking for it so I could get to other chores. One of my stockings had a hole in it and I meant to get a new pair from Christine’s basket. To my dismay, Birgitta brought Mistress and they followed me to the opening in the wall. We walked several yards beyond it following the hoofprints. A few men kept at the chopping and fitting of the remaining log posts.
“Go fetch it, Mary. You don’t have to go far. It’s just there in that green place,” Mistress said, pointing. “I have so much to do. Don’t tell me you are too lazy to get a goat a dozen steps from the wall.”
Birgitta twisted her face to one side. “I should have a man go with her, and I will go, too. If the bear is there, we’ll scare it away as we did before.”
“The bear is out there,” I said, without address or bowing my head.
“Mary, do as you are told. I want you to help me with the sewing, Birgitta. She can go by herself,” Mistress said. “It’ll not take long.” She turned to a workman. “You there? Bring your axe and help her get the last goat.”
An old man looked up at her and heaved a great breath. “Which way did it go?” he asked. I pointed toward the greenest shrubs. He led the way.
I found droppings and they smelled fresh. “See here,” I said, “toward the stream.”
Mistress said, “Well, go and get it. We’ll wait for you.”
The man knelt and looked at the ground. “Stream’s that way. I don’t think you’re going to find it. Fell in an’ drowned, that’s my thinking. I have work aplenty before me. There’s no smell of bear in the air. Leave it be.” He shouldered his axe and walked back to his chores with Mistress and Birgitta following him.
“Wait for me!” I cried, and ran toward them.
“Make her go or you will sleep in the shed this night, Birgitta!” Mistress called.
Birgitta’s face showed how she hated being ordered by her sister. She turned to me, forced to comply though her voice was gentle. “Go fetch that goat, Mary.”
“It has drowned. The man said it,” I insisted.
Mistress whirled and leaned over me. “Do as you are told! Your carelessness has lost this goat as it lost my daughter. As it lost my money—oh, I rue the day I bought you, you heathen wretch. Go and don’t return without my goat.” She turned to her sister. “See that she gets it,” she said, then turned back to me. “If you don’t find it I’ll have them seal up the wall with you on the outside!”
Watching them walk away, I cursed them both under my breath with words I remembered the pirates using. It felt like power to say that the two old Hasken women should twist and dance in hell on the devil’s prong, even though I was not altogether certain what it meant. I kicked at the goat droppings with my shoe. They were an hour or so old. “Nob?” I called. It was a foolish name for a goat. “Nob?” The closer I was to the edge of the stream, the more I trembled. I moved some brush, holding my breath, expecting to see Nob standing there, munching away. Or, worse, what was left of Nob and the bear standing there, munching away. I looked behind me, wondering if the man with the axe was watching so he could run to my aid if the bear came and I wondered if I would hear the bear coming through the woods over the tumbling of the water.
I got to where a great tree had fallen, its roots lifted from the bank, making a muddy slide. The goat’s hoofprints went there but it did not walk into the water; it kept going around the side. I heard the animal bleating softly. When I got behind the tree trunk, I could no longer hear the woodsmen chopping logs or the sounds of the community, people moving about, animals lowing and clucking. The water murmured at my feet; downstream, it rippled at a small waterfall. The tracks led on and I heard a goat bleat. On I went, listening and smelling the air for the bear. Still, I smelled nothing but the weedy smell that the bank of the stream always carried, and the whiff of a grown-up’s sweat. I wondered, since I had now been in love with a man, albeit a young man and a dead one at that, whether I had grown up enough to smell like Patience. “Nob?” I called. “Nob?”
I went down the stream until it turned again to the left. In parted grasses where the reeds had grown tall, Nob stood chewing, tied to a stick. “God’s balls!” I cursed. Why, who would play such a cruel trick? This could bring the bear just to eat the goat and, in turn, me! As if a cold blast of air took me, I wondered if Mistress were so cruel as to put the goat here and send me to it so I would be killed. I would show her a thing or two about bravery, I thought. With shaking hands I took his rope from the stick and turned to lead him home. I then let out a soft moan against the hand that wrapped around my mouth. The hands held me so tight I could barely breathe or move but I got the quick image of a dark man, wearing paint upon his arms and some strange pants, no shirting at all, with lines drawn across his face and chest. Beads rattled against his body as he held me tight to him. I smelled his skin as he nearly crushed the life out of me, and knew it was the grown-up sweating that I had smelled. I tried with all my might to scream and to fight away, but his strength was as two men and my voice stopped in my teeth.
My eyes searched the woods and stream and brushy green. From it, like plants thrusting up quick and brown, a hoard of dark brown men in feathers and paints and the strange pants arose. They made signals to each other with their hands, and began to move in the direction I had come, while my captor held me tight, my fingers snarled in the rope around Nob’s neck. The goat had not been tied by Mistress but by them.
The hand that gripped my face loosened enough to let me breathe. The man shook me and said a word, squeezed my face and said it again as he turned to look me in the eye. Quiet was what he wanted. I nodded. He lessened his hold and I remained mute. He took his hand from my mouth and said the word again. I nodded again. He held my arms with both hands then, and I dropped the rope. Nob nestled in the grass to chew cud.
I smelled smoke. It rose in billows across the tops of the trees, bringing with it the smell of fresh green wood and old dry planks and the reek of scorched flesh. Oh, la, Patience! Oh my soul, my sister! I stayed still as stone. A bird called and another. Birds do not sing when there is danger about; even a child knows that. I realized I had not heard a bird in all the time since I left the garrison for the woods.
As the sun began to lower, the noise of many people tramping through the grass frightened away the birds again. Here they came, Indians. Behind them in a line walked people from our village, finally more Indians. They came leading cows and one of the oxen. They came with Mistress’s goats. They carried two blunderbusses and bags of powder, bags of flour, salt, and dried corn. They laid them all in a circle and went over the stoc
k of booty just as the pirates had on the ships. The settlement people who came to the green brush had blood and smoke and dirt smeared from head to toe. My heart pained me, wanting to cry out, Patey, Patey! My eyes searched each face, discarding each image until at last I saw her following Rachael, followed by another girl. An Indian man with a pole in his hand prodded her as they moved along. Mistress and Master, along with the Newhams, Reverend Johansen, and others I recognized, men and women and boys, were part of the second group. Birgitta was not there. I looked for her again, sadness and anger mingling in my heart. I grieved for a moment, but then I thought that the old wretch should have come with me to find the blasted goat. At least she would have been taken alive. Cursed be the merciless, I thought, changing the words from the Bible, for they shall receive no mercy.
The Indians bade us all sit by shouting orders and pushing people to the ground. Most of the people wept, even the men. Once all had sat upon the ground, the man who kept me led me to them and pushed me down amidst the younger girls. Other Indians arrived, carrying away all that they could from the houses. Iron kettles and bales of cloth, hats and coats and lengths of woven wool plaid I saw with surprise, for I had not seen such a cloth since leaving home. Ma had kept her lengths of plaid hidden between layers of linens. Just like my petticoat, Ma had always hidden things under other things, always kept those secrets that were dangerous, or precious, close at hand and yet hidden a breath away. I squeezed my legs together, taking pleasure as the hard corners of Ma’s casket bruised my thighs.
There were about the same number of Indians as there were of us, yet they were all men and we were more women and children than men, and they were the ones with hatchets and blades and arrows. I wondered that Reverend Johansen did not speak to them for he knew their tongue, but he was far from me and I could not ask.