The sun slid from its heights toward the treetops, and the Indian men, quick as any woman in a kitchen, started a fire and butchered three of the goats. Mistress Hasken flew at them, her fists raised, crying, “My goats. My goats! You heathen scourge!”
I saw an Indian raise his hatchet as she came for him and turned my head away. I heard the thud and I heard Master Hasken groan in anguish. Heard her fall to the ground. Others began shouting at the other captives. I knew without question that they meant for the people to be silent. I felt horror that Mistress Hasken was dead, yet it was because she had been stubborn and stupid that he had killed her. Why would anyone run against armed men who had already proved they had the will and more weapons than they needed to kill us all? Many began to wail and call out that we would all be killed.
One of the Indians stood before the lot of us and said, “Hello!” in a loud voice. “No more fight. No more die. Stay alive. No more fight. Understand?”
I nodded as if I had been instructed by a teacher. No lesson could have had more weight than Mistress Hasken’s corpse.
Jabbing parts of the goats onto sticks and stretching them across rocks placed before the fire, the Indian men roasted the meat in a way I had not seen done before. I dared to wonder whether they would give us something to eat. I knew enough of hunger aboard the ships that it had impressed me with the stern belief that to live or die was nothing compared to doing either with a full belly.
They boiled dried seed corn in a pot with the goats’ heads to make a porridge. When the sky began losing its last colors, two of the Indians took tin cups they’d stolen from the village and scooped them full of the porridge. One man chopped hunks of the open-fire-cooked meat into each cup. They lined up the littlest children first and fed them. I was one of the first.
Oh, what a glorious repast! Something in it was so filling and good with meat roasted instead of boiled, I could have eaten three cups of it. I handed my cup back to the bronze man who had given it, and smiled, saying, “Thank you, sir.”
When I sat down, Rachael said to me, “How could you eat from them heathen curs with Mother just murdered before our eyes? You must have no soul at all.”
I thought about turning away without answering her, or declaring I was glad Mistress was dead for she was an empty, clanging gong of a woman, but I said, “I was hungry and they fed me. It was a Christian thing to do and far better than I have been treated by some such as claim salvation.”
“It’s poisoned,” she said. “I hope you die screaming.” Then an Indian man came and said aught to her and she quieted, though she knew not what he spoke.
All the captives got the supper. Rachael put up her nose at it and would not eat. The man who offered her the cup passed it toward the next captive without even a raise of his brows, for he cared not whether she ate. The Indians did not eat of it but some of them prepared another dish, taking the goat liver, heart, and lungs to add to the corn porridge. They added some of the blood and cooked this a good while, and all of them ate it with such relish I wished I had a taste of it, too.
After all had been fed and there remained some of the stew in the pot, the Indians scooped up the last of it and held it forth, offering it with gestures to any who would have it. I gulped it with relish, even though the liver taste was strong. I had not felt so full and drowsy in as many weeks as I could remember.
The Indian who had spoken English before stood again. “No more fight. No run away. Warriors watch. Sleep now. Walk after sun come. No run away. Understand?” I settled in to sleep without much ado. Those among the group who felt terror at this captivity wept; some prayed aloud. As I closed my eyes my last thought was how I had exchanged places, indeed, with the women in the hold who knew how to be captive, who knew how to take anything offered without question. I felt grown-up. I even wondered if I looked as grown as I felt.
When the sun had barely greened the sky, they pushed us with their feet to awaken us, and distributed the cooking pots, sacks of corn, axe heads, and bolts of cloth among the captives. The men compelled everyone, even the smallest, to carry something. I was given a lidded iron kettle-oven with a handle, the kind Birgitta had called a spider, but then she called everything and everyone that when she was angry.
By noon all my fingers hurt. I switched the heavy iron pot from hand to hand, moving it from one knuckle to another, trying to favor the most sore places. I walked with a searing pain in my side, my legs trembling from exhaustion. Patience walked somewhere behind me. All stayed quiet. All walked in fear. We walked on without stop, walking until some of the weaker ones fell out, and the Indians put them upon their backs and carried them! I saw two girls and one grown man carried upon the backs of the warriors.
When they did that, the Indians also carried what the captives had carried, taking the boxes of sugar and bundles of tied onions. That evening followed almost the same as the one before it, with stew made from what we carried and two more goats. That night, even Rachael ate the porridge. The next day the Indians told the men captives, by demonstrating what they wanted, to carry some of the children. Master came to choose me, for I was the lightest burden, but I looked him in the eye and said, “I am not weary one whit, sir. Choose one of your own daughters.” I picked up my kettle and started down the path, pushing to the front of the column behind the Indian man who had first caught me in the brushes. I put my feet in his tracks.
It had never before occurred to me that there were better or worse ways to die. Perhaps Mistress Hasken’s death was merciful. At least, one quick fatal blow such as Mistress received would be preferable to the suffering agony Lonnie had endured. The first death I had known was Allsy’s. We were ill at almost the same time with the same disease, though I recovered. I knew, I thought, what her suffering contained. I had heard men fighting and cursing and beating each other aboard ships. Hangings. Whippings with the cat. A quick blow to the head was a kindness, indeed.
These Indians were a puzzle too large for my learning to sort, too complicated for my mind. I wanted to ask Pa what was to be thought of them, since I could not fathom it myself. I thought of Pa, floating in the bay, face to the sun, smiling as if in sleep, the way he did on a Sunday afternoon, resting from the week’s work in a hammock on the front promenade of the house. I thought of the crystal-blue waters of our bay, and the coral-lined coves, and the warm sun and balmy, fragrant breeze. Coffee flowers and roses, Ma’s gardenia, almost too strong to enjoy except at a distance, plumeria and cocoa blossoms. “Oh, la,” I said aloud. “When shall I get home again?”
An Indian came up behind me and said something that sounded to me like “Kzomi mannossa,” although I could not speak the word again. He knelt and motioned to his back, and took the iron kettle from me. I nodded and climbed upon him. As he walked I leaned against his back and wept for the first time in weeks. My feet burned with the relief of not having to use them. My fingers throbbed without the narrow handle of the iron kettle cutting into them. My heart ached and ached and ached with the lack of some new injury to it, as if all the others were enough, stored there, just now felt, like a thorn that had worked its way through the sole of a shoe.
Oh, Ma, I thought, when I see you again, I shall never cease being good and kind and forever look upon your dear face, my most trusted and loved life’s companion. How dear it would be to climb into your lap once more, held in that blessed peace.
We had traveled four days and slept in the forest three nights when on the fourth night, I awoke from a terrible dream of being in the Saracens’ hold. Instead of the wee Irish girl being pulled from the cell, the men had come for me. Patience, in the dream, was not there to keep me from them. Instead of taking me abovedecks to be fed but thrown overboard, one man pulled my arms, one pulling my head, one on each foot, until I came apart in pieces like a wooden toy whose threads had sprung. I lay awake shivering, for I was lying next to the man who had carried me, and rather than curling up around each other as the prisoners were wont to do, the Indians slept li
ke logs, straight, as if they felt no cold and needed no warmth. I wiggled closer to him, putting my side against his arm.
I stared upward at the sky. The moon was bright again, MacPherson’s lantern, as it had been that night in Jamaica. I whispered toward it, “What have I done wrong to have ended in this place, O God?” Yet even as I said the words, I thought about Allsy and how I had been the one meant to die. How could I go back and trade my life for hers, even if I wished it? A person could not turn backward. Time went onward to tomorrow, and so if I were still alive as Patey said, and this was not Purgatory, it was still penance for having lived when others died. I sighed and raised my head above the man to look toward the place where the evening fire had been. The embers seemed alive, coursing red to black to red again, giving no light. I put my head back down. The man next to me snuffled a little.
What reason had I to live at all? I thought. “Oh, la,” I said. “Ma, please come find me as soon as I can write you a letter.” Tears slid from my eyes, one on each side of my face, and ran down into my hair. I rubbed at the right side, feeling the hair, now a couple of inches long. I must still look like a changeling without the bonnet.
I tried to fall asleep but fear came over me in a wave, and though I lay upon my back, my whole being felt weak. At first I believed I wanted to weep again, but when I breathed the more potent need was to scream. I smelled a bear. I leaned upon my elbow toward the Indian next to me and tapped him on the chest with two fingers. He sprang to wakefulness, hatchet in hand. I did not cry out. “Bear,” I said. “I smell bear.”
He frowned and grunted. They did much grunting, as a way of not bothering with words, I assumed, but sometimes a grunt and a frown spoke enough.
“A bear,” I whispered. “You understand, a bear?” I sat up and made claws of my hands and opened my mouth.
The man stared at me, annoyed. “Ashon,” he said.
“Rarrr!” I said, in a soft voice, making my hands swipe the air as the claws of the bear had done. “Bear.” As if the animal had heard my noise, a low growl come from the brush in answer. “Bear!” I shouted, and the same moment the man hollered, “Owasso!”
The Indians jumped to their feet, all holding their weapons. As everyone awoke, the bear shuffled into the clearing where we slept, and walked right upon Patience, going over her even though she raised her arms. The bear was so startled it stepped on other people, too, and backed up in surprise, rearing up on its hind legs. With but the moon for light, the captives tried to scatter. The Indians yelled and called to each other and three with their hatchets and one with a stone club fell upon the animal. The man with the club rendered a resounding thud upon the bear’s skull. It reeled backward but roared and charged at him, wrapping him in its claws. Other men stabbed it while it fought the club-wielding man as if they were two men battling hand to hand.
Back and forth they went, around the campfire, and as the bear reared up, someone behind me, so close that the air next to my head trembled with the power of it, let go with an arrow that struck it in the breast. The animal swung its paw and sent one of the Indians backward into the coals. He cried hideously and rolled out of it, smoke coming from his leathern shirt in holes that went through to the skin beneath. Another man came behind the bear and climbed aboard its back, stabbing into its neck with a dagger. At last the bear weakened and slumped to the ground.
That caused the most terrifying effect of the night, for such a cry of howls and cheers rose from our captors that I thought Hell had come loose here in the forest. Before long, the fire had been rekindled, and while some of the Indians began to carve up the bear and skin it, others began a hatchet-waving dance around the fire. Now and then they swung their weapons as if fighting, and shouted, crying out to the sky. The fire circle grew to six feet wide, as wide as a man was tall. The kettles prepared, the bear’s head went into one and four others each received a great foot. They filled the kettles again with fat from the bear’s carcass, melting it just as we rendered fat from animals butchered in the settlement.
By sunrise, the special parts of bear’s meat finished cooking and the rest of the carcass was dropped into a ravine. Only six of the Indians ate the meat and drank the broth it served. I could have gladly had some, but it was not offered. The original four men got some, as did the one who had knifed its throat and the one who had been struck into the fire. All the others saluted them and more singing followed the breakfast. During their celebration, I made my way to Patience’s side. The Indians danced in circles, sometimes around the fire, sometimes just spinning in place.
“Dance with me!” I called over the din. “Let us dance, Patey!”
“No, Ressie.”
“It is not a slave dance.”
“No, I said.” She held me to her then, hugging me in a way I did not expect and I fell against her. I watched from under her arm as the savages made merry, holding the bearskin in the air and diving with it as if they were great birds in the sky, calling, whooping, and growling at each other. The stink of bear now seemed like good stink.
One of the Indians saw us together and rushed at us. I fell away in terror as he grabbed Patey’s hand and held it aloft, shouting. He dropped her hand and lay in the dirt. The man holding the bearskin turned and danced toward him and jumped over him. He swung it around Patience then jumped over his friend again.
All the Indians circled her, reached toward her, touching her arms and skirt and hair. She turned back and forth, frightened, holding her arms close to her bosom, tears upon each cheek. I heard her moan when one last man reached forth and touched her bonnet, pulling it from her head. Her long red hair fell from its binding and rolled down her back in curls. They stopped what they were doing and got quiet. When the Indians laid the bearskin upon the ground and bade Patey sit upon it, I felt proud for her and relieved, for I knew they meant her no harm. I suppose I might have been frightened for her, for later on that day I realized just how terrifying it would have been, had it been me they had chosen, but at the time I was most interested in the pantomime of the bear crossing Patience without harming her, and her rising up almost under it, causing the animal to rear and step away.
The man who spoke English came to her and said, “Gude woe-man. Shield of Owasso. Gude woe-man.” He took a bracelet off his arm and handed it to her.
Patience took the bracelet and nodded, but I suppose she was too surprised to smile. She placed it upon her arm where it hung, for his arms were meaty and strong and hers as lithe and delicate as a deer’s leg. He smiled then, pointed to her, grunted, and said, “Shield of Owasso,” in English, and something else in their language. All the Indians got quiet, waiting for something to happen or perhaps for Patience to do something. When the quiet became long, indeed, she looked about her. The Indian man who had fallen into the coals sat alone, his face braced against the pain.
Patience stood and the Indians all made small noises, watching her. She went to the fireside and, with her skirt as a pot holder, lifted one of the kettles of rendering bear fat by the handle and took it to the bearskin. She went to the man with holes in his shirt and tapped on his shoulder. He looked up at her but did not move. The other Indians stepped back, as if they had no idea what she was doing, when I knew in an instant. Patey grabbed the man’s shirt sleeve and tugged, saying, “Come here so I can help or you’ll take a fever. Come on. Over here. Right there, sit,” and she motioned to the bearskin. Indians gathered all around so I had to squeeze between two of them to see.
With tugging and motioning with her hands, Patience bade the man remove his shirt! Once he knew it, he did as she asked him, and though he resisted her pointing to the mat several times, at last she made him sit upon the skin. She dipped part of her apron into the bear grease, testing it so that it was not too hot, and began dressing the burns on his back. When the apron would not reach high enough, for it was naught but threads anyway and was sewn to her bodice in such a way that she could not remove it, she stopped. In a moment, she pulled her beautiful red
hair over her shoulder and dipped the ends of it into the bear oil, using that to dress his wounds.
The sigh that went up from the Indians was as if they thought she was a saint performing some miracle. When Patience was satisfied that his back was as clean as she could get it, she rose and put the kettle back near the coals, now glowing from the earlier revelry. As she did, I moved toward her. She wrapped her arm about my shoulders. I held to her with both arms about her middle. She drew a breath and said toward the Indians, “If you will honor me, honor also my sister.” She led me to the bearskin. One of them stopped me. No matter what Patience did with movements of her hands, he would not allow me to join her in sitting upon the bearskin. The Indian I had wakened with the news of the bear spoke up then, and told that part of the story. The Indians murmured.
Reverend Johansen stood in the circle of captives so I said to him, “Sir, I pray you, tell us what they say.”
He shook his head. “The words I know are of some other tribe, I fear,” he said, but in his voice I heard a tremble, as if the words were not Indian words at all.
One of the Indians spoke to the others and they began to pack up the night’s merriment. They pushed Patience and me to the front of the line, and in a short while, before I was tired at all, my companion bade me climb upon his back again. I was happy to ride there, and fell asleep there, knowing Patey walked behind me.
If the Indians had a map, they consulted it not. I wondered if they traveled by the stars as mariners are wont to do, and it seemed they did study the sky at night when there were stars to see but most often there were not. Yet we moved through forest and marsh and glade as if they followed some supernatural guide, always with the sun rising on my right hand and setting on my left.
Each evening we ate stews and porridges. At last it came that they had eaten all the goats, a deer brought back by some warriors, and several rabbits and squirrels. I loved the squirrel best, but the Indians did not seem to like to kill enough for all of us. That day they brought the ox up and I knew it was for slaughter but I did not want to watch so huge an animal killed and gutted.