فصل 11 - بخش 02

ELEVEN

The seven years were up and John was a journeyman cooper, skilled at making not only pails and tubs but every size of cask, with their quirky names: pin, firkin, kilderkin, barrel, hogshead, puncheon—even the enormous 108-gallon butt. From the beginning he had loved this occupation: the cooper’s craft of making circles. He was more skilled than Thomas, but they could both now call themselves coopers.

Master Medlycott and Ezra told them horror stories of their own graduation from apprenticeship, in large cooperages back in England.

“Very rough and rude it was,” said Ezra. “With all my fellows pulling off my clothes and rolling me down the bank into the river. In winter.”

“Praise the Lord there is no river by our workshop,” said Thomas.

Ezra said gravely, “But the pond is not far away.”

“They stuffed me naked into a great butt,” said Master Medlycott, “and poured more nasty kinds of liquid on me than I care to remember. The smell was in my hair for weeks.”

John and Thomas became nervous after this, and kept a cautious eye on Ezra and Master Medlycott at the start of every day. But in the end there was no ritual, just a family dinner in their honor, and Master Medlycott presented each of them with a signed letter called a Certificate of Craft. The children cheered—particularly Willie, who had by now realized, to his dismay, what a vast amount an apprentice had to learn to become a journeyman.

The community had grown, with its center still the meetinghouse, and I could sense that the elders who were its most important people did not admire John. He was known as a skilled craftsman, but they still remembered his challenging question to Walter Kelly—who had now become an elder himself, much given to expressing firm moral pronouncements on the behavior of his neighbors. It was felt by the elders that John Wakeley, by some accident of nature, shared some of the disturbing opinions of Roger Williams. Nobody would have been surprised or grieved if he were to leave to join the new community that Master Williams was said to have founded—along with a trading post—some seventy miles to the south.

This was exactly what John had in mind. He had written a letter to Roger Williams, sending it by a Marshfield merchant who was headed for the trading post, but he had no idea whether it ever arrived. Also he had no intention of leaving alone; he wanted to marry Huldah and take her with him. He confided this to Mistress Medlycott—choosing a day when her husband was away, since they both knew Medlycott’s mistrust of Roger Williams’s ideas.

It was late summer, and Mistress Medlycott was sitting on her porch in the sunshine, shucking beans. John sat on the edge of the porch, his long legs dangling.

“I know Master Medlycott will let me go,” he said. “But asking for Huldah is not so easy.”

Mistress Medlycott said, smiling, “Will she have you?”

“Yes, she will,” John said. “I’m very fortunate.” He smiled too, but then worry took over again. “But Master Kelly will never agree to it. He refused ever to let me visit her, as you know.”

Mistress Medlycott had already discussed this possibility with Mistress Kelly while sewing a quilt, though she wasn’t going to admit that. “Huldah is twenty years old, John,” she said. “A good age to know her own mind. And she is not an indentured servant—the arrangement between the two families was informal, I believe. I think you should be bold, and at Sunday meeting ask the Kellys for a chance to discuss this with them.”

She nodded her head firmly. She knew—though John did not—that Master Kelly was away for a week or more on business for the militia.

So it was Mistress Kelly to whom John nervously spoke after the sermon on Sunday morning, with Huldah hovering in earshot, and to his amazed delight she instantly gave them both her blessing.

“You must both go to Plymouth and ask permission of Huldah’s family, of course,” she said. “And you of yours, John Wakeley, though I know your mother will be pleased. I shall miss you sorely, Huldah, but out of affection, not need—the girls are of an age now to do all the chores for which you came. And so they should, to learn to be good, accomplished wives when they too leave home.”

And before long the Kelly daughters, now ages nine and twelve, were abuzz with excitement at the prospect of Huldah being married—though among these sober Puritan people, a wedding was a quiet civil matter and not a cause for a festive or even religious celebration.

And so John came to see me.

He told me everything that had been happening to him, as he always did. Even though he knew that I could sense his mind and his heart and every moment of his life, the telling was important to him. And to me. It was the way things might have been between our peoples, if they had not been so aware of difference.

We talked for a long time, for the last time, until it was almost the moment for the sun to rise beyond the salt marsh.

He said to me, “There’s no help for it—I have to leave this colony. I can’t live with the way they treat your people. Will you come with me?”

It was hard to explain to him.

“This is the only place where you may see me,” I said, “but still, wherever you go, I shall see you. I shall be with you. We are friends.”

John said, “I can tell nobody about you. Even Huldah would think me mad, or a witch. Why in the name of God are you still here, to be my friend?”

He spoke Pokanoket to me deliberately all the time now, even though he knew we could understand each other whatever language we used. He spoke it as if he had known it since childhood.

He put out a hand toward me, beseeching, something he had never done before in all this time, but there was no substance that he could touch.

And I had no answer for him, or for myself.

I said, “It is mystery.”

That afternoon, John found Goodman Bates sitting in the Medlycott living room with a mug of beer; he still spent the night there whenever he made a delivery. Mistress Medlycott was sitting at the table beside him, shelling beans.

The settlement had grown so much that Goodman Bates carried goods and people to and from Plymouth every week now. He had a grander wagon, covered in canvas over metal hoops, though it was still drawn by slow, sturdy oxen. Other drivers carried passengers much faster in carts and carriages drawn by horses, but they were also more expensive.

Goodman Bates raised his mug in salute. He had a great private disdain for the severer members of the colony, and was as genial to John as he had always been.

“Congratulations, free man,” he said. “I have just come from Duxbury, and I leave for Plymouth in the morning. I shall be glad to carry you and my niece with me at no charge, if that would please you. It is my gift to you both.”

John gazed at him, startled. He saw Mistress Medlycott smiling at her beans, and began to feel, rightly, that he was the object of a benevolent plot.

“I am most grateful,” he said. “But is not tomorrow very short notice for Huldah and Mistress Kelly?”

“Not at all,” said Goodman Bates. “Mistress Kelly said her girls were all cock-a-hoop at the thought of a wedding.”

He took a long draft of beer.

“Master Kelly is still away with the militia,” he added blandly, “but she said she was sure he would agree. We shall leave before dawn.”

Mistress Medlycott caught John’s eye, smiled a little, and looked away again.

John was thinking rapidly, and trying not to shout with delight. He was overjoyed at the thought of leaving with Huldah, but there were things he would now have to do in a hurry. He said, “Thank you again, Goodman Bates. If you will excuse me for a while—I have some work to finish.”

“Tell them all I require them within the hour,” Mistress Medlycott said, turning the spit over her fire. “This meat will be spoiled if it cooks too long.”

“I will,” John said.

And he left the old friends to their gossip, heading not for the noisy workshop, but for the barn. He checked Goodman Bates’s oxen, contentedly eating in their stalls beside the Medlycott horses, and then he took a spade and made his way through the trees to a clump of birch trees that he knew very well.

It was a grey, misty afternoon and a fine rain was falling. John cleared away a layer of dead leaves and dug the spade into the ground behind the birches. The soil came out easily, because he had dug here every few months for the past seven years. Once more he uncovered the familiar sight of my tomahawk, still intact, its blade still tightly embedded in the wood of the bitternut hickory tree. For the last few years it had been folded inside an old piece of leather for protection.

John took out the tomahawk, carefully, and wiped off a little dirt. But this time it was only the piece of leather that he dropped back into the hole.

He filled in the soil and put back the layer of dead leaves. Nobody would know that anything had ever been buried here. He put the handle of the axe through his belt so that it was hidden under his jacket. Then, quietly, he went back to the barn and left the spade. He looked round carefully to make sure nobody was watching him and he ran out of the house, down the track, down toward the salt marsh and the sea.

He had always felt that when he left this place he should take the tomahawk back to me. But now the leaving was almost upon him, and in the light of the day I would not be there to tell him what to do with it. He knew only, as he ran, that he wanted somehow to say a farewell.

He reached the low ridge at the head of the salt marsh, and walked along it to the island. He could see the footprints of deer disappearing into the trees, through the fringe of scrub oak. Beyond the island the salt marsh was half-covered with silver water as the tide crept in, and he could just make out an osprey wheeling toward the sea, a brief dark silhouette against the grey-white sky.

John took the tomahawk out of his belt and looked down at it, perplexed. Then, beside the track, barely visible through the leaves, he saw the memory hole he had made for me.

He thought, Of course.

He knelt down. Nobody was in sight anywhere, on this damp grey day. Using the blade of the tomahawk, he scraped out all the carefully laid small stones from the bottom of the memory hole, and set them aside. Then he dug out enough soil to leave a space for the tomahawk, and laid it gently down in there.

He looked down at it for a moment, remembering many things. Then he covered it with soil and set the small stones firmly back on top, so that the memory hole was just as it had been before.

He stood up, brushing the dirt from his britches, and he looked up at the island, into the shadowy trees.

He said aloud, “Good-bye, my friend Little Hawk. Thank you. Remember me. I shall always remember you.”

He was speaking Pokanoket.

Very early the next morning, John bundled up all his belongings and steeled himself to make his farewells. Goodman Bates sat up on his wagon, waiting; they would go from here to the Kelly house to pick up Huldah. Everyone was gathered in the yard of the house. The children cried. Willie shook John’s hand. So did Ezra, and clapped him on the shoulder. Mistress Medlycott hugged him as she had when he first arrived, though now John was taller and broader than she was, and gave her a warm, grateful embrace of his own.

To John’s surprise, Master Medlycott hugged him too. “Th’art a good craftsman in spite of thy perilous ideas, John,” he said, the old accent strong again for a moment, “and I wish thee well, wherever it may be. Here are the tools you cut your teeth on, as is our tradition.” And he gave John a large handsome bundle that held all a cooper’s tools that could be carried, fitted into a folded leather carrying case.

“Thank you, Master,” said John. “I thank you with all my heart. For this and for much, much more.”

“One other thing,” said Master Medlycott. “It was a thought of Priscilla’s, of which I heartily approved. We have two young replacements for Aaron, as you know, but he has some hearty years in him yet. He is an early marriage gift.”

He whistled, and out of the barn came Thomas leading Aaron, who was a horse: a sturdy, handsome, broad-backed horse who had patiently carried panniers of casks to customers for years, or sometimes both Thomas and John at the same time.

John opened and shut his mouth, but no sound came out. This was an astounding gift, particularly for a young couple faced with the prospect of walking seventy miles to Roger Williams’s trading post.

Thomas grinned. “And tha can shovel up after him,” he said.

Huldah and John rode to Plymouth sitting high on the bench seat of the wagon next to Goodman Bates. The horse Aaron plodded behind, his bridle tied securely to the back of the wagon. Goodman Bates devoted himself to giving his rural passengers the ominous news from England, where, he said, the arrogant King Charles had ruled with no Parliament for ten years now.

“No wonder so many good Englishmen sell their lands and goods to bring their families to our colony,” he said. “Plymouth grows apace, you will scarce recognize it.”

John said, “Have you heard news of Master Roger Williams since he left the colony?”

“Oh yes,” said Goodman Bates amiably. “Your hero is the governor’s ear to the Indian tribes south of here, they say. He was always a great talker, as you recall, and he talks in the savage languages too. But he has a good head on his shoulders—there is much trade established with his new settlement. Some younger men have joined him in his town of New Providence. They say a fair piece of land is to be had there for thirty shillings.”

On the bench, Huldah’s hand crept toward John’s and squeezed it. He gave hers a squeeze in return, though he had no idea how they could acquire thirty shillings.

In Plymouth there were more streets than before, more horses and carts, more storefronts, more noise—and they saw Indians here and there among the English faces. Most of these were from my people. Our sachem Yellow Feather had forged a stronger relationship with the colony in the past few years, selling them land in exchange for cloth, metal tools, and other goods from overseas. But even though the whites now bought the land instead of simply taking it, it was they who set the price, and each sale was registered by their court.

Cattle grazed on the common, and the crowing of roosters punctuated the day. Plymouth sounded and smelled like a farmyard. Down by the harbor there was the smell of the sea instead, but John and Huldah’s families lived inland, at different ends of the main street. In their snatched talks over the years, the two of them had come to realize that their parents all knew each other from the days of their first arrival, and that as a small boy John must have played with Huldah’s eldest brother Edmund.

It was at the Bates house that Huldah’s uncle Goodman Bates first stopped; it was set back a little way from the road, behind the workshop of Huldah’s father, who was a carpenter. Huldah jumped down and ran into the workshop, and John slowly followed, finding her clasped in the arms of a big bearded man who, to John’s great relief, held out a hand to him even before letting his daughter go.

“So this is the man who would steal my beloved daughter,” said Master Bates, shaking John’s hand. “Welcome to our family, John Wakeley.”

And so it went, as everyone at this warmhearted house welcomed John, from six-year-old Dauntless, who looked startlingly like Huldah, to his former playmate Edmund, now a journeyman blacksmith as big as his father. John left Huldah to spend the night with her family, and set off eagerly for his own home. Goodman Bates had taken Aaron away to be stabled with his own horses overnight. Tomorrow John would fetch Huldah to meet his mother. He and Margaret had exchanged letters, but he hadn’t been home for almost a year and he ached to see her.

He strode happily along the wide Plymouth street, still marveling at the way the town had grown during his seven-year absence; even in late afternoon it was bustling with people, horses, carts. Ahead, a large group of people came walking toward him, and he saw with surprise that they were Pokanokets, formally dressed; there were feathers on a few of the heads.

He gazed at them, thinking of me.

A wagon drawn by four horses came rattling toward him on the other side of the street—and suddenly John saw a very small boy run into its path from the group of Indians, in pursuit of a lumpy leather ball. Instinctively he dived forward to grab the child, and caught him just in time. The wagon rattled past, with an angry shout from the driver.

John rolled in the dust and scrambled to his feet, clutching the child, who was whimpering softly. “It’s all right,” he said to the boy in Pokanoket, “it’s all right, don’t be afraid, everything’s all right. . . .”

He was still soothing him as the child’s mother reached him, taking the boy from his arms, scolding. She was young and pretty, dressed in soft deerskin, and very upset. “You must never do that,” she babbled to the boy, “never, in this busy town—”

“He’s not hurt, I think, just frightened,” John said.

“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you so much. You saved his life.”

“Be more careful with that ball, little man,” John said to the boy.

The girl was still too shocked to smile. “You are very kind,” she said.

They were both speaking Pokanoket without thinking about it, and a deeper voice broke in, this time speaking English.

“Thank you, my friend. I thank you for my foolish son.”

It was an older man, much older than the girl. He was the center of the group, and clearly a person of importance. He had lines painted on his strong-boned face, as did several of the other men, and two splendid red-tipped eagle feathers in his hair.

“You are welcome,” John said. “Children do these things.”

“Who taught you to speak my language so well?” said the man.

John smiled. “A good friend,” he said.

The man hesitated; he was curious, but could sense that John was eager to be on his way. “I am in your debt,” he said, “and I thank you again.”

They gave each other a little bow and went in their separate directions. John strode the last few yards to his mother’s house, and the group of Pokanokets made its measured way along the street. They were headed for a visit with Edward Winslow, a former governor of Plymouth Colony, who had a farm in Marshfield not far from the Medlycotts but was often in Plymouth to help his successor, Governor Bradford. Two or three of them looked back from time to time at John.

And I was caught in amazement at what I had just seen. Although John did not yet know the man he had just met, I was filled with wonder at my first sight of the great sachem of my people, our father Yellow Feather.

When John arrived home he was dusty but happy, and even happier to find that Daniel Smith was away for a few days with Walter Kelly. Both were trusted lieutenants in Captain Standish’s militia, and Standish had taken them to Boston for a meeting with the Massachusetts Bay General Court.

As John walked through the door, his mother looked up from her baby’s cradle, stared at him, and burst into tears. She held out her arms, and whispered into his collar, “You look so like . . . for a moment I thought you were Benjamin back from the dead.”

Both John’s sisters had left home to marry. The baby in the cradle was the third child his mother had had with Daniel; their first son, Samuel, had died of a fever when he was four years old, and there was a daughter, Rebecca, who was now three. John played with his half-sister Rebecca, and after a first bashful half hour she was fascinated by the big brother she didn’t remember having seen before, and kissed him good night before she went to bed.

John and Margaret sat up late, talking by firelight.

“I remember Huldah Bates as a child, she was a sweet little girl,” Margaret said. “God be praised that you have found each other. And you are a true trained cooper now, John. I am so proud of you. Master Hawthorne is the only cooper in Plymouth, down by the harbor—there is more than enough work for another. Or perhaps you think of working for him?”

John looked into the fire, then took a deep breath and told her of their plans to travel to New Providence and join Roger Williams.

Margaret was silent for a moment. Then she reached out and took his hand.

“You must follow your conscience, my dear,” she said. “Sometimes indeed the Lord tells us to do things we might not have chosen ourselves. But I hope you and Huldah will first marry in Plymouth—yes?”

“Of course,” John said. He smiled. “Otherwise I fear you and Mistress Bates would never speak to us again.”

But the next morning, things changed.

He had slept in the back room that had been added as a workshop; he had been out to pump some water for his mother; he was sitting at breakfast with her and Rebecca. The door of the house opened abruptly, and there silhouetted against the morning light was Daniel Smith, carrying his musket, with Walter Kelly close behind him.

John got to his feet, still chewing a piece of bread. His mother jumped up as well. Rebecca remained contentedly seated.

“Father!” she said. “Look, my brother John is here!”

“So I see,” said Daniel Smith.

“Welcome back, husband,” said Margaret. “Master Kelly! Will you break your fast with us?”

“We have eaten. I thank you,” Kelly said.

John stood there. He had swallowed his bread, but he couldn’t speak. His mother knew nothing of his confrontation with Walter Kelly in the Marshfield meetinghouse. And the sudden sight of these two men together had rushed him back through the years, to the terrible moment of their first encounter.

“John has finished his apprenticeship!” Margaret said proudly. “He is a journeyman cooper, out in the world. And he is to be married!” She pulled out the bench beside the table. “Pray you, come and sit down.”

Daniel came in, leaned his musket against the wall, and gave a fatherly pat to Rebecca’s small bonneted head, but Kelly remained in the doorway, looking at John. He stood tense, holding his musket; his face was flushed.

“And who do you intend to marry, John Wakeley?” he said.

John said, “Now that she too is out in the world, by courtesy of Mistress Kelly and yourself—Huldah Bates.”

“Never!” Kelly spat the word out like a gunshot.

Margaret looked from one to the other of them in alarm.

“You are not worthy of that good God-fearing girl!” Kelly said loudly.

John stood up tall, trying desperately to be calm.

“Begging your pardon, Master Kelly,” he said. “Huldah is a free member of this colony, able to choose who she shall wed, and her family approves of the match.”

“Huldah is part of my household!” Kelly shouted.

The baby woke up and began to cry. Margaret went to the cradle.

Daniel looked at John, frowning. He said, “If you wish to be a craftsman in this community, do not offend one of its most respected elders.”

John said, “But Huldah is no longer living in Master Kelly’s house. She was not an indentured servant, it was a private agreement between families. She is twenty years old, and she is here in Plymouth, and she and I are to be married.”

“You’ll not marry here!” snapped Kelly, furious. He stalked out of the door. Daniel went after him.

John turned to his mother and kissed her on the cheek, then reached for his bundle of tools.

“Good-bye, mother,” he said. “God bless you.”

And he was out of the door after them, leaving Margaret unhappily rocking a screaming baby.

Kelly was marching down the street, with Daniel hurrying after him. “Master Kelly!” Daniel called.

Kelly paused, and swung round toward John. “There is a price to pay for attacking your betters!” he said. “Marshfield wouldn’t have you, and no more will Plymouth! I’ll take good care of that!”

Now John was losing his temper too. “And you’ll do us no harm,” he said, his voice rising, “for we are bound for New Providence and Master Williams’s tolerance!”

“Art mad?” cried Daniel. “That troublemaker? He lives with the Indians! Do you want to raise savages?”

“Of course he does!” said Kelly violently. “They are all idolators! They care more for the heathen than for the chosen people of God!”

Something in John’s brain snapped.

“And did the Lord God ordain one of his chosen people to shoot an innocent man?” he shouted. People passing by were staring at them. “To kill one who was trying to save a life?”

“Hold your tongue!” Daniel said in panic. His eyes darted around the street, as if looking for escape.

John shouted, “And then to hide the body so that none should see?” Anger was flooding through him, bursting out of its long suppression. “If you had been honest men, you would have confessed your mistake openly to all, and asked forgiveness of God!”

Now people were pausing, curious, alarmed.

Daniel grabbed him, pinning his arms to his sides. “Stop!”

John stopped. He stood still; he took a deep breath. He looked hopelessly at his stepfather, a God-fearing, bigoted man who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time nine years before.

“It was an innocent mistake,” Daniel said. His eyes held John’s for a moment, and perhaps there was a hint of a plea in them. But it was too late.

Kelly stood facing John, quietly now, but his quietness was more ominous than his rage. Though he was a head shorter, he had an icy confidence.

“You ignorant young fool,” he said softly. “Get out of this colony! You know nothing of the intentions of the Lord for his Saints, nor the treachery of the savage peoples. Go to New Providence and be damned. And an Indian shall wear the scalps of your children at his belt!”