“I know,” Drew said softly. “I know.”
“Can’t we do something?”
“A lot of men hit their wives,” Drew said. “It’s not a crime.”
“Well, it should be!” Nell cried.
Flames crackled in front of them, a cozy, warm fire that kept the outside chill at a distance. Inside the house, in front of the fire, in each other’s arms, this was the only place they felt secure.
It was here that they had made the decision not to return to England, to remain in the colony.
They were not safe, no matter where they lived, so they might as well stay here out of Bishop Laud’s reach. At least they had each other; of that they were finally sure.
“Will he kill her?” Nell asked.
With great difficulty she had asked the question that was foremost on her mind, a question that had to be asked no matter how painful it was.
“It’s Eliot’s nature to hurt people.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
Maybe it was wishful thinking, but Drew didn’t think Eliot would kill Jenny. His scheme was bigger than Jenny.
“No, I don’t think so. But we’ve got to find a way for her to communicate with us if she needs our help.”
“Yes!”
Nell swung around, eager to do something, anything other than sit around helplessly.
“We need to do this right away,” Drew said, “eventually, Eliot will keep Jenny away from us, if he hasn’t thought of doing so already.”
“You really think he’ll forbid her from seeing her own sister?”
“She’s beginning to see who he really is. That’s a threat to him. He can’t risk letting her talk to anyone, especially you.”
Nell nodded.
“I have an idea,” Drew said.
He explained to her the Bible code he and the bishop had used.
“It won’t work,” Nell said immediately.
“Why not?”
“We don’t have the same translations,” she said. “Jenny and I have the Geneva Bible. You have that other translation.”
“Then she’ll have to send the message to you or maybe use entire verses.”
He showed her how a message looked when coded.
“So that’s what that paper was in your Bible!”
Drew looked at her. “You saw the coded message in my Bible?”
“When Poppa left it in his study. I didn’t know what it was and I didn’t care.”
“Did you see the message from Eliot too?”
“Are you implying I was snooping through your private things, Master Morgan? I found the coded message by accident.”
His tone became exaggerated, playful.
“Why not? You were secretly reading the notorious, forbidden, scandalous King James version of the Bible in your father’s study!”
“I was curious!” she defended herself.
The argument was interrupted by a sudden rash of kisses.
Drew outlined the dangers of the note plan. Eliot would be suspicious if he saw Jenny passing a note to Drew or Nell. They needed someone neutral. They couldn’t use the Coopers because there was an Edenford connection. They needed someone they could trust who had no connection with Edenford.
“The Ramsdens,” Nell said.
“Perfect,” Drew said. “But Eliot must not be allowed to see a coded message! Although he couldn’t translate it, he’s seen the code and would immediately associate it with me!”
“We’ll just have to pray that God will blind his eyes!” Nell said.
The air was biting as Drew made his way down the hillside toward his hut. It wouldn’t be long before the first snow of winter fell. The sky was clear and a half moon shone overhead. Drew couldn’t get over how small the moon looked in Boston. It was so much larger in England.
AS he approached his wigwam it appeared someone was standing beside it. He couldn’t quite make out a figure.
Drew quickened his step, straining his eyes toward the hut.
Then he ran.
The figure wasn’t standing, but stretched against the hut, backward, in an unnatural position.
He ran faster.
“Oh Lord, please, no!” he cried.
Sassacus had been lashed to the outside of Drew’s wigwam, stretched against the side, legs and arms spread wide.
As Drew got closer, a grisly sight unfolded.
Stripped of all clothing, his friend’s flesh was cut in hundreds of places. Muscles, normally hidden beneath the skin, were exposed to open air. The wounds seeped with blood. Shallow breaths made the slits in his cheeks flutter, showing his teeth and making him look like a fish gasping through its gills.
There were so many wounds Drew didn’t know where to begin.
He fought to untie a hand.
“Sassacus! Hold on! I’ll get help!”
Eyes blinked. Back arched against the hut, Sassacus stared at the stars.
“Unnn … nnksss.”
Drew could barely hear him.
“I’ll have you down in a minute.”
But he was lying. The sight of his friend had unnerved him. Drew’s hands were fiddling with the leather tongs, but he was making no progress untying them.
“Unn … kassss,” Sassacus said again.
“Uncas? Uncas did this to you?”
The Indian nodded.
“Anyone else?”
Another nod.
“Sassacus, did Eliot Venner do this to you?”
The Indian nodded again.
“Paaa … fff … me.”
“Hold on, Sassacus,” Drew cried, as he fought the knot.
“Praaa … fo … me.”
“Pray for you?”
Sassacus nodded.
His head slumped to the side.
Dead.
Out of his mind with rage, Drew ran the length of the settlement to Eliot’s house. He pounded on the door, shouting Eliot’s name, challenging him to come out. No one answered. He ran to the back of the house, banging on the shuttered windows. No response. Tearing a limb from a tree, Drew used it as battering ram to force his way through the front door.
The house was completely dark.
He ran from room to room, shouting Eliot’s name.
No one was home.
Chapter 28
When Eliot returned to the colony a week later, he was loaded down with pelts. Said he’d been out trapping and took his wife with him to show her what he did when he was away. Part of the time she stayed with the Pequots.
When told of the murder of Sassacus, Eliot Venner performed a remarkably believable role of a shocked and grieving friend. Real enough to satisfy most everyone in the colony. He said wasn’t surprised that Uncas had a part in it.
Eliot had broken off the friendship. According to him, the Indian was crazy and dangerous.
Despite Drew’s objections, Governor Winthrop could find no reason to charge Eliot with the death of Sassacus. A nod from a tortured man in obvious agony was hardly enough evidence to try a man for murder.
Under the pretense of taking Jenny sewing materials to make samplers, Nell visited the Venner house. Eliot didn’t let Nell come into the house. He promised to give the materials to Jenny.
Nell insisted on seeing her sister.
Reluctantly, Eliot agreed, but he stayed in the sitting room with them the entire time. Nell took her time demonstrating new stitches and sewing techniques to her sister.
Eliot was obviously bored but stayed nearby nonetheless.
He interrupted the ladies once, demanding that Jenny pour him an ale. Stopping midsentence, she jumped at his command. Eliot finished his tankard of ale while the ladies talked. Nell suggested Jenny get her husband another one and, soon after that, another.
Nell told her sister about the code when Eliot went outside to relieve himself.
“How did she look?” Drew asked.
Nell’s hands were shaking. She fought back tears.
“She’s scared to death of
him, Drew. You would hardly recognize her. She’s thin and pale. She flinches every time he speaks or comes near her. She never smiles. There’s no life in her eyes. She told me Eliot will hurt her because I came to visit her.”
Nell could hold back the tears no longer.
“I’m just glad Poppa isn’t alive to see her like this!”
The winter of 1631 was treacherous. Through January and most of February, the snow was heavy. Women were rarely seen outside the home; their duties were inside, cooking and nursing the sick. There were few social occasions, so Jenny Venner’s absence stirred little concern among the colonists.
Drew and Nell didn’t see Jenny again until the first Sunday of March at a church service. She and Eliot arrived late.
If it wasn’t for the fact that she arrived on Eliot’s arm, Nell wouldn’t have recognized her sister. Jenny was white and drawn, her cheeks were hollow, and a dark gray shade surrounded her sunken eyes. She wore her right arm in a sling. An accident, Eliot explained, laughing at his wife’s clumsiness. She’d slipped on the stairs and broke it when she tried to stop her fall.
During the entire service, Jenny never looked up, never smiled.
In the spring Eliot went trapping, though it wasn’t his usual two or three week stints. This spring he limited his trips to a day, two days at the most.
On one occasion Nell watched him head into the woods, waited an hour, then ran to the house to see Jenny. The door was bolted shut from the outside, and the latch was tied with strips of leather. All the window shutters were nailed shut.
Nell knocked and identified herself.
Jenny answered weakly from behind the door. She sounded ill. Her voice was hoarse; she sniffed loudly and couldn’t complete a sentence without coughing, accompanied by a deep rattling sound in her chest.
When Nell said she was going to untie the door and come in, Jenny flew into hysterics. She pleaded with Nell to leave.
When Nell refused, Jenny became so distraught that at times her language was unintelligible. She said that if Eliot learned Nell had been there, he’d kill both her and Drew. Jenny begged Nell to leave. The only way Nell could get Jenny to calm down was by promising to leave.
When Nell returned home, she was so angry, she cried the rest of the day.
Drew attempted to visit Jenny, but with similar results.
It was Mary Ramsden who eventually succeeded. She convinced Jenny to allow her to pry open a shutter and pass in food and medicine. When Eliot came home and discovered that the shutter had been pried open, he beat his wife.
For a month and a half no one in the colony saw Jenny. During that time Nell made it a point to walk by the Venner house every day that Eliot was gone. She paused just long enough at a side shutter to slip a piece of paper through the crack. Every day there was a different message and a Scripture verse.
She told her sister how much she loved her and reminded her of God’s love. Most of the Scripture passages were words of comfort from the Psalms, like, “Yea, though I should walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me: thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.”
Nell only hoped her sister would think to burn the messages after reading them so Eliot wouldn’t find them.
One day, while she was stuffing the paper through the crack, she heard a weak voice from the other side.
“Nell?”
“Oh Jenny! It’s so good to hear you! How are you, darling?”
“I saw Poppa last night, Nell.”
“Poppa?”
“He was calling to me. He said it would be all right, Nell. Poppa said it would be all right.”
“Yes, Jenny. It will be all right.”
“Nell?”
“Yes, Jenny?”
“He told me he loved me.”
“Yes, Jenny. Poppa loves you. And so do I.”
Boston Colony was booming. It was the building season, and everyone was busily making his mark on the town’s expanding profile. The days were longer, and the colonists began to shed their winter clothing. The town was filled with promise. The people of Massachusetts Bay were fulfilling their dream of turning the wilderness into a God’s city.
Drew emerged from his hut and stretched his aching muscles. It was dusk and he was hungry. It had been an interesting day, a good one. His muscles ached from hauling wood for David Cooper’s new cobbler store. The beefy, black-haired cobbler was positively giddy about having his own shop. Drew had offered to share his limited construction knowledge with Cooper, since the cobbler couldn’t afford to hire one of the overpriced professionals.
Then, in the middle of the working day, John Winthrop and Alex Hutchinson, a member of the colonial council, pulled Drew aside and told him the people of Boston were impressed with him. The two men wanted Drew to consider becoming a member of the council. Drew could hardly wait to get over to Nell’s for dinner and tell her the news.
“Drew! Drew!” Mary Ramsden ran toward him with a picture frame of some kind in her hand. She could hardly speak for lack of breath.
“Jenny—” she said.
Drew grabbed Mary by the shoulders.
“What about Jenny?” he shouted.
Mary gasped for air.
“—gave me this.”
She held up a framed sampler. It was a picture of a house with sun and clouds overhead.
Between gasps Mary said, “I was walking by the house … she motioned to me from a window … handed me this. Then Eliot appeared behind her … she was scared … so scared.”
Mary took a deep breath.
“She said it was for me, a thank you for helping her when she was sick.”
Another deep breath.
“But I think there’s a coded message in it.”
“What makes you think that?”
“She said she was particularly proud of the border. Said it twice. She was scared, Drew. Real scared.”
Drew searched the border. It was a series of X’s in brown, yellow, and orange thread. A seemingly random pattern. Nothing special that he could see across the top, down the right side, across the bott … there! On the bottom. Three numbers— 40, 21, 35.
Drew handed the sampler to Mary.
“Wait right here!”
He ducked into his hut.
A moment later he emerged with his Bible.
“What was the first number?”
Mary studied the bottom of the sampler.
“Forty.”
Drew counted down the books in the index.
“Forty! Matthew. Next number.”
“Twenty-one.”
Drew turned to Matthew chapter 21.
“Next number!”
“Thirty-five.”
He found Matthew 21:35 and read aloud.
“And the husbandmen took his servants, and beat one, and killed another, and stoned another.”
“God help us!” Mary cried.
“Mary, go get Marshall. Tell him to go to Nell’s house. Tell him to bring his gun.”
Mary nodded grimly and ran toward home.
Drew got his musket and loaded it. His hands shook as he filled the pan with powder and loaded the ball. Then he ran toward the Coopers’ house.
Little Thomas was playing in a field near the home with friends. It was nearly dark, but it was easy to pick him out from among the other boys by the stiff way he moved. It was doubtful he’d ever fully recover from the vat incident.
“Thomas! Come here quickly!”
“Master Morgan!”
The boy ran to greet him.
“Listen to me, Thomas, listen carefully.”
Drew’s tone and serious expression had the boy’s immediate attention.
“Go home and get your father and James—”
“But James is sailing for England tomorrow,” the boy said.
“This is more important. Tell your father and James to go to Nell’s house. Tell them to take their guns. Tell them Nell needs help. Hurry!”
Thomas ran as quickly as his stiff legs would carry him.
Jenny’s message warned only of danger; it didn’t say where or when. But for Drew it no longer mattered if Eliot was planning something for tonight, tomorrow night, or next month. This was going to be settled tonight.
His first act was to protect Nell. Marshall and the Coopers would do that.
He was going to Eliot’s house. Jenny wasn’t going to spend another night with that man.
The house was dark when he approached it. He circled the house from a distance, looking for any bit of light from between the cracks of the shutters. There wasn’t any. He used the tree in front of the house as cover for his approach, holding his musket in front of him with sweaty hands.
He moved quietly to the door.
It was unlatched and cracked open.
Crash!
He slammed the door open with his shoulder, charging past the stairs into the sitting room.
It was so dark he could barely see. He looked for movement of any kind. There was none. No one was there.
His chest heaving, his eyes wide and alert, Drew waited for them to adjust more fully to the darkness. He tried to wet his lips, but his mouth was dry. There was an eeriness about being in someone else’s house in the dark, an eeriness that was compounded knowing it was Eliot Venner’s house.
When his eyes adjusted to the details of the room, what he saw made him sick.
Dead animals everywhere.
Lying on the table, their bellies sliced, their entrails spilling out.
Raccoons, rabbits, squirrels.
Nailed to the walls as if they’d been crucified.
“Eliot!” Drew shouted.
Fighting back the rising sickness, Drew charged up the stairway.
The rooms upstairs looked like the rest of the house. Stands were toppled. Clothes were thrown everywhere. Drawers hung halfway from their dressers like tongues from a mouth, mocking him. There were mutilated animals everywhere, some of them dressed in Jenny’s clothes.
Drew had to steady himself against the wall as he stumbled downstairs and out of the house.
The fresh air did little to calm him. The only thing to do now was to join the others at Nell’s house. Together they could organize to find Jenny.
The Puritans (American Family Portrait #1) Page 45