فصل 27 - بخش 03

THREE

Slowly, John’s back healed. Huldah gave birth to their fourth child, a boy whom they named Roger. The work of the coopers grew, as the town grew. John’s journeyman, Peter, moved south to Aquidneck Island to start a cooperage in Portsmouth, but Benjamin would soon be done with his apprenticeship and take Peter’s place. Samuel was apprenticed too. The family divided its time between farming and the making of casks, once in a while even fishing from a canoe, almost as Leaping Turtle and I had done.

Roger Williams came back from England with his charter, and was named president of Providence Plantation. More English families were arriving every year, and in all the existing towns around Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay, a new generation of white men was taking over from the first. Like Benjamin, like my people, they were born here; they had never known any other home. But unlike my people, they were not born with the deep inherited sense of connection to this land, and the life lived upon it for centuries. Land, for most of them, was property, opportunity, and a source of wealth. And once my people too had begun treating the land as property to be sold, or exchanged for the white man’s goods, it was too late to stop.

Our father Yellow Feather had kept the peace by selling land, for a long time. He and Wamsutta even sold the land round their own village, to a group of the Plymouth leaders, and moved a little way south to Mount Hope, overlooking the bay. As the years went by, Yellow Feather, grown older and wearier, retired fifty miles northward to live a quiet life among the Quabaugs of the Nipmuck tribe. There he died, and Wamsutta became sachem of the Pokanokets as his father had been for so long.

The people from my village had long drifted in this direction, as the English settlements spread out from Plymouth and Boston to cover the land where once we hunted and fished and farmed. Leaping Turtle and Quickbird and their children were among those who had joined the groups moving nearer to Mount Hope, away from the “praying villages” in which the Indians had turned Christian, and they kept to the old ways. I watched them, and I watched as their children grew up, but I was bound more closely to watching John.

He spoke to me often, if he was alone in the woods or the fields. Whether or not he still believed that I could hear him, he spoke to me. He would tell me what he and Huldah and his children were doing, as he would have told a living friend. I think he could sense my presence, and he still missed talking to me, as I missed talking to him.

Our leader Wamsutta was not so intent on peaceful dealings with the English as his father had been, but he did his best. He even requested that he and his younger brother Metacom should henceforth be known by the English names of Alexander and Philip. But though the colony’s diplomatic governor Edward Winslow had been a good friend of Yellow Feather, his son Josiah Winslow was a very different man. He was now leader of the Plymouth militia. One dark day he came with ten armed men to confront Wamsutta, now Alexander, for having twice sold land not to Plymouth, but to the people of Providence Plantation.

Josiah Winslow arrested Alexander, our sachem, at gunpoint. After being held for a night at Winslow’s house in Marshfield, Alexander became ill, and a few days later he died. Many of my people believed he must have been poisoned, including his brother Philip, who succeeded him as leader of the Pokanokets.

I watched tensions rising between the multiplying English and the Indians, over the years that followed. Neither side was seeking war, but one incident after another brought the danger of it closer. When three Pokanokets were hanged by the English for a murder that some thought they had not committed, the tension rose to a peak.

I watched, and I ached for my people. And for John’s people too.

Philip, once Metacom, did not remember the day when John Wakeley rescued little Trouble from the trampling hooves of an English horse. He had been told about it, of course, but had forgotten it long since, and he had never really known John, the friend of his father’s once called the Speaker because he had a gift for speaking our language. That gift was no longer remarkable. Many Indians now spoke at least some English, and an English minister had even translated their Bible into the Massachusetts dialect of our language.

The problem between our peoples was rooted not in language but in many things that Philip could not control, on either side: greed, resentment, arrogance, pride. Along with the new generation of colony-born Englishmen there was a new generation of Pokanokets, younger, driven by the same high emotions. I saw many of them begin to collect around Mount Hope, and I saw the colonists in Providence Plantation begin to feel fear.

A meeting was called at the Wakeleys’ house, because everyone knew that John had had more dealings with Indians in his lifetime than anyone but Roger Williams. His four closest neighbors were there; they were gathered on benches outside the house, because it was summer, and two had brought their wives. Jedediah was there too. They were anxious to make a plan in case of an emergency; there was talk that Philip might declare war on the English, and Philip’s village was only a few miles away.

“He is an intelligent leader in a very difficult position,” John said, “and I don’t think he wants war. But I hardly know Philip—not as I knew his father.”

Jedediah sighed. “Plymouth planted the seed of this when they forced him to sign that treaty. Asking a sachem to become their subject—and to give up all his tribe’s muskets, which their own people had sold him!”

“He has been replacing them through land sales ever since,” said a grey-haired farmer, bent but still brisk.

“Of course,” said Jedediah.

A younger man said, “And these executions of Indians for murder—it was a bad business. I heard tell Josiah Winslow made their trial uncommon swift.”

“Plymouth has a lot to answer for,” John said.

Standing behind him, Benjamin glanced down. Inside John’s shirt collar he could see the edge of the long-healed scars. “And so does Boston,” he said.

The grey-haired farmer said, “Blaming does us no good. What are we to do if we are attacked?”

“We have muskets, and a good supply of powder and shot,” said the young man.

“If your farm is surrounded,” said the grey-hair, “that supply may not last long.”

“We shall all be scalped!” said one of the wives, and she started to cry.

Huldah came across and put an arm round her. I could feel the warmth in her that always reminded me of Quickbird.

“We shall not be scalped, nor killed,” she said. “We shall trust in the Lord, and devise the best way we can of warning each other in case of attack. So that if one family is in trouble, all the rest can come to its aid.”

The young farmer said, “A bonfire in each yard, ready to be lit. To send up a smoke signal, as they say the Indians used to do.”

“There is a garrison at Bourne,” said another. “The best thing if attacked would be to flee there, on horses. The Indians will likely be on foot.”

“Bourne is too far,” said the grey-hair. “My house is the largest here—perhaps we should fortify it into a garrison.”

Jedediah said, “A town is safer than a garrison. Perhaps you should all consider moving to Providence town.”

“Roger Williams has said the same,” John said. “He feels that we should all be prepared to leave now, in case things grow suddenly worse.”

The others all stared at them.

“But this is our land,” the young farmer said.

In an oak tree beside the house, a mockingbird was singing its loud double, triple song. On and on it went, a new phrase each time and yet on and on, on and on.

Among all the Pokanokets gathered at Mount Hope, I saw now the start of something I had never seen in life. They began the war dance, to the beating of drums, that goes on and on for days and weeks to bring courage and fierceness to a peak before an attack is launched. In the summer heat the young men danced, sweating, angry, aching for action. There were calls to attack the English. There were prophecies that no war would succeed unless the English attacked first. Dust swirled round the moving feet as the dance and the drumming went on.

My sister’s children were grown men and women, and their parents were dead. The oldest son, named for me, was a strong, tall warrior, respected by his fellows. He was there among the dancers, stamping, swaying. He knew nothing of John Wakeley; he knew nothing of me, except that long ago I had been killed by an Englishman. Like his brothers and all the men of his generation, Running Hawk was part of the force that began this war.

I watched, and I listened, with dread.

The English knew that the drums were beating, and they continued to fortify their largest homes into garrisons, where people might take shelter with soldiers to defend them. But they did nothing in attack.

An Indian messenger came to Roger Williams in Providence.

“Your people have driven us too far,” he said. “You must know that you yourself will never be harmed. But be warned that peace can no longer be maintained.”

Roger Williams sent at once for John and Huldah, and some other friends in outlying farms, begging them urgently to come at once and take refuge in his house. One of his sons thundered up to the Wakeleys’ door on horseback, shouted his message to Huldah when she ran out, and then cantered off again to the next farm.

John and Benjamin were halfway through putting the head on a large cask. They dropped their tools and ran to hitch the horses to their two carts, which already waited near the house. In a flurry of packing and loading, the family seized clothes, food, supplies, anything of value that could be moved, and piled boxes and bundles onto the carts. Samuel saddled the riding horses. Roger drove his mother’s best chickens, all indignantly squawking, into a carrying coop.

“And the cows?” he shouted to John. “They’re in the far field!”

“Leave them.”

“The Indians will kill them!”

“Sooner the cows than us!”

So the Wakeleys, like all their neighbors, fled from their home toward the town.

The war dance went on, for days and days.

Perhaps Philip promised his army of impatient young men that they might raid unoccupied houses, with no killing except of animals, in order to enrage the English and force an attack. Perhaps. I saw only that there came a point, on a Sunday when the English were all at worship in their meetinghouses, when finally a group of Pokanokets erupted northward from Mount Hope.

They ran swiftly across their own territory toward the English farmlands, near a garrison where a force of English soldiers had been gathering. The families from the nearby farms had already taken refuge inside the garrison, just as the Wakeleys had gone to Providence.

Philip’s angry young warriors looted the farms, and slaughtered the cattle and pigs that for years had been trampling the corn in neighboring Pokanoket fields. Because now they had muskets as well as their bows and arrows, this was not hard. They killed no people, only the animals, which they cooked and ate that night with noisy pleasure.

These attacks on English property went on at intervals: a provocation, though never a threat to any human life. Not until one morning when two Englishmen, a farmer and his son, came out from the garrison to check their own farm and found Indians looting it. The son had a musket.

“Stop them!” shouted the father, furious. “Shoot!”

So the son aimed at an Indian and fired. The man fell, but stumbled up again and fled with the others. The farmer and his son rescued as many belongings as they could carry, and went back triumphant to the garrison.

The next morning, a trio of Pokanokets who spoke some English went openly to the garrison and asked to speak to the commander. One of them was Running Hawk.

“We have killed nobody,” he said, “yet this boy shot one of our people. We wish to know why.”

“Is your fellow dead?” said the commander.

“Yes,” Running Hawk said. “He is dead.”

The commander looked at the boy, a loutish fifteen-year-old who had been bragging endlessly about his shot.

The boy shrugged. “What of it?” he said. “He was a thieving Indian. It was no matter.”

“Fool,” said the commander. He turned to look at Running Hawk’s icy face, and he said in apology, “This is the word of an idle lad.”

“It gives us our answer,” Running Hawk said.

He swung round abruptly, and the three men walked away.

Early the next morning, before news of this had reached Providence, Huldah was helping Mary Williams prepare breakfast when Benjamin came clattering through the kitchen, pulling on his coat.

“Where are you going?” she said in astonishment.

“To the house, very quickly, with Father. He says he is going mad without his tools, he wants to fetch them.”

“Jedediah has tools, for goodness’ sake!” said Huldah. Jedediah’s cooperage was near the Williams’s house, and they were all working there now.

Benjamin kissed her on the cheek and made for the door. “It’s not the same—I know what he means. I’d like to get mine too.”

Huldah followed him. John was outside with the horses.

“Don’t worry,” he said to her, “we shall be there and back very fast. The Indians are stealing cows now and then, they say, but not up here, and there’s been no violence yet.”

“Please be careful,” Huldah said.

“Of course.” He swung himself onto his horse. “Is there anything you want us to bring?”

“My cloak from the press, perhaps. Just come back as quick as you can. God bless you both.”

John blew her a kiss as they rode away. “All will be well!” he called.

But the Pokanokets were fanning further out over the countryside that morning, seeking more farms, seizing more cattle, angry over the death of their fellow the day before. Running Hawk and two others, riding in search of plunder, came upon the Wakeley farm.

They saw two horses tethered outside the workshop. Horses were as valuable a prize as guns.

Benjamin was in the house, pulling out the cloak Huldah had asked for. John was in the workshop, collecting his tools. He looked out the window, and he caught his breath as he saw the three Pokanokets riding up. He knew he had to get to them as fast as he could, to tell them who he was, to reason with them.

Running Hawk reined in his horse at the gate, and kept guard as the other two dismounted to take the white man’s horses. He cocked his gun and held it to his shoulder, tense, watchful, in case of an angry shot from anyone inside.

John came running out of the workshop, still with a cooper’s tool in his hand. It was his best drawknife, in a long canvas case.

But to Running Hawk it looked like a musket.

Instantly he swung his gun toward John and he shot him. In the moment between the pressure of his finger on the trigger and the sound of the explosion, he heard John shout in Pokanoket, “Stop!”

It was too late to stop.

John dropped to the ground. The horses reared at the noise of the shot; the Pokanokets tried to calm them. Running Hawk jumped down and ran to John.

He was lying on his back, a great stain on his chest, with blood coming out. He looked up, and he said in Pokanoket, “I beg you not to harm my son.”

He had no idea who it was that he was talking to.

He thought for an instant of me, as the years dissolved, as he went out of time, and he said, “I am the friend of Little Hawk.”

Then he died, the blue eyes still open.

“Come!” shouted one of the others urgently to Running Hawk. They were mounted again, leading the horses away. Running Hawk looked down once more at John, amazed and bewildered, and then he turned and ran back to his own horse, and followed them.

From a window of the house, Benjamin shot at him. But his musket misfired and there was only a small clicking sound, that nobody else heard.

Except me.