The Dumb Shall Sing

by Stephen Lewis

  “Proceed,” Woolsey said, “he has broken our law.”

  “Mark the sinner,” Davis added, signifying that God’s law and man’s law, in this case were the very same.

  The crowd now stirred. A man in front of Massaquoit raised his son onto his shoulders so that he boy, who was no more than three or four years old, could witness.

  “Mark you,” the father said, and the boy obediently craned his neck forward.

  Massaquoit stepped back, and his motion was detected by the man who turned to stare hard at him.

  “You too,” the man said. “I know who you are.”

  Massaquoit did not reply. He watched as George Firkin lifted his bright blade to the face of the man in the wooden collar, and with one swift movement brought it down across the man’s nostril. Blood spurted, and Oldcastle opened his eyes. The blood dripped down onto his lips, and he stuck out his tongue to catch it. The people watching let out a communal gasp, a sound that seemed to express joy, relief, perhaps admixed with just a little terror, as the criminal stood bleeding his red blood in front of them.

  “Let him stand here until noon,” Minister Davis said, “so that he will long remember this day.”

  “And at noon,” Magistrate Woolsey added, “the constable will release him, and he will leave this village of Newbury before the sun sets, for we will not have the sun shine on him again while he is among us.”

  * * * *

  Margaret had finally fallen asleep. She snored, gently, as the crowd gasped in response to Oldcastle’s blood. Catherine sat for a long while in the silence of the jail. She heard Drake’s footsteps and then the scraping of his chair. Apparently he had forgotten that she was still there, or he did not care to remember. When Catherine managed to stand up without awakening Margaret, the jailer’s deep and rasping snore was offering a counterpoint to the girl’s more delicate sounds. Catherine walked quietly passed Drake whose head was cradled in his arms on his table.

  She made her way outside where Oldcastle stood in his lonely ignominy. Only a few children remained staring at him in intervals of play, which had nothing to do with the man or his crime. Catherine reached into her pocket and removed the small jar containing the paste formed from comfrey leaves. She strode directly to the pillory. Oldcastle’s eyes had been closed, but he opened them as she approached.

  “This will help,” she said. And without further explanation she applied the paste to his wound, which was now crusted in dried, brown blood. Oldcastle tried to jerk his head away, but he was restrained by the pillory. Catherine studied his face, with both nostrils now collapsed.

  “Do you have something in that jar,” Oldcastle asked, “that can give me a new nose.”

  “I am afraid I cannot offer you that.”

  “A pity,” he said, “but I must learn to suffer with what I have left.”

  “That you will,” Catherine said, “whether you want to or not.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Massaquoit heard the footsteps, and without opening his eyes, he reached across the reeds he slept on, which still smelled pungently of the brackish waters from which they had been removed, until his hand found one of the stones that formed his fire circle. The steps were coming from the west, from the direction of the house. He had managed to shingle this side to shield him from the eyes of the English. He knew by the slight warmth on his cheek that the sun had just risen and that its rays were finding their way through the open eastern wall of his wigwam. The steps came steadily but without stealth. Apparently, his attacker was careless or so confident as to ignore the advantage of surprise. Massaquoit pulled the stone towards him, feeling its roundness against the palm of his hand, and breathing the ash from last night’s cooking fire. He tensed as the steps stopped a few feet from where he lay. He extended his arm so that he could bring the stone crashing down on his adversary’s head.

  “Matthew, are you awake?”

  For a moment he did not respond to the strange name, but he did recognize the voice, and then the name made sense and he let his arm drop. He replaced the stone on the circumference of his fire circle. He crawled through the frame of his doorway, smelled the brine of the harbor, a half mile away, and inhaled deeply. Phyllis stood before him. She was wearing a crisp white cap.

  “I did not mean to startle you,” she said. “But it is the Sabbath.”

  “And you want to tell me that I should not offend your English god by working.”

  “More than that. Mistress wants me to tell you that we are all going to meeting together, you, me, her, and even Edward. And she wants us to arrive early. Before the others. So that we can watch them come in, instead of them watching us.”

  Massaquoit stiffened, but he controlled his face so as not to show his anger. He knew this day would come, and he recognized that his immediate safety depended on showing the English that he could learn their ways, so as to prove to them that it was not a mistake to spare his life, but still, he despised being made a fool of, of providing the English a spectacle they could gawk at. And he had little intention of becoming a Christian. All this flashed through his mind, but he simply nodded to the girl.

  “I am ready to go to meeting.”

  She did not turn back to the house as he expected. Instead, she stared at him.

  “Is something the matter?” he asked.

  Her eyes moved from him to the clothes Catherine had left for him, which were lying next to the tree.

  “You should put those on, you know. You don’t want to be going to meeting looking like a savage.”

  For a moment he thought she was mocking him, and the anger rose in like a hard fist in his belly. But her face wore an expression of such honest concern that he had to conclude that she was unaware of the insult she had just offered.

  “But is not what I am?” he asked.

  “Surely,” she replied with a smile, as though happy that he understood his position, “but that is why we are taking you to meeting. So you can unlearn your savage ways.”

  “Ah, now I do understand,” he replied. “That is why I was spared. So I could learn these things. And will you teach me how to obey your god?”

  At this, she blushed.

  “Go on, now. You know I am not fit to instruct you. It is the Mistress and the Minister what will do that.” She looked again at the clothes.

  “I will put them on,” he said.

  “See that you do. I will leave you now.” And to show that she respected his need for privacy, she turned on her heel so hard that she almost lost her balance. She righted herself and hurried back to the house.

  Massaquoit knelt besides the clothes. He chose the shirt and pulled it over his head. It stretched tight across his shoulders and when he breathed he felt it press against his chest. He managed to pull on the breeches over his loin covering, but he decided not to wrestle with the hose. He attempted the shoes, but he could not make his heels fit inside of them. He tossed the shoes aside. Lastly, he put on the sleeveless doublet.

  The shirt and the doublet felt like a coil of rope wrapped around his chest. He took a few steps, but he could not swing his legs in his natural gait. They felt heavy even though the breeches were of no greater weight than the deerskin leg coverings he wore in the winter. He squatted beneath the tree to wait. After a few moments, though, he felt the muscles in his thighs and calves tighten, so he stood up. He paced around the tree until he heard the white woman’s voice calling to him. She was standing midway between the house and his wigwam. Edward and Phyllis were already on the road. Catherine, too, had on her Sunday gown, of rich, dark blue material, with a cap of the same color.

  “Matthew,” she called. He looked at her, but he did not respond.

  “Matthew,” she tried again.

  He squatted.

  “Massaquoit” she offered.

  He stood up and walked toward her. When he reached her side, she started toward Phyllis and Edward. He followed.

  “Magistrate Woolsey is meeting us,” she said. “He has b
rought someone to sit with you.” They came abreast of Phyllis and Edward, who was wearing the same clothes he wore to work in the garden. “When we get there,” Catherine said, “and I have to address you. I will call you ‘Matthew’. You shall respond.”

  * * * *

  Woolsey was standing in front of the meetinghouse. Next to him was an elderly Indian. The sun was already beating down, but the man was wearing a full beaver hat. A fringe of white hair protruded from beneath the hat and circled his head. He was dressed in a doublet, breeches, and hose, all of which he seemed to wear comfortably. Woolsey stepped between them.

  “Matthew, this is Wequashcook. But we call him William, as we are pleased to call you by your new Christian name.”

  The two Indians nodded at each other.

  “William has accepted Our Lord,” the magistrate continued. “It is our hope that he can help you do the same. He will sit next to you inside.”

  Wequashcook motioned for Massaquoit to follow him, and the two walked into the meetinghouse.

  “Did you notice anything?” Catherine asked Woolsey, once the Indians were out of hearing.

  “Why, no more than that your idea to have William tutor Matthew seems to be off to a very hopeful start.”

  “They know each other.”

  “I can’t believe,” Woolsey replied. “Else would they not have greeted each other before I introduced them?”

  “That is exactly the point.”

  “What is?”

  “Their manner of greeting.”

  “But they did not.”

  “It is in the way that they did not that I am talking about.”

  “You have left me far behind, I am afraid. As usual,” the magistrate smiled, and then he offered his arm. Catherine took it and they walked into the meetinghouse. Catherine looked to the rear of the building and saw the two Indians sitting together, but there was space for another to fit between them. She wondered, for a moment, what would happen if that rear bench filled, and they were forced to close the distance that they had quite obviously decided to keep between them. Woolsey took his seat on the bench closest to the pulpit, on the side of the meetinghouse where men of his social position sat. Catherine cast one more glance at Matthew and William, who sat like stone, their eyes fixed straight ahead, and then she took her seat, also on the foremost bench, but opposite Woolsey’s, on the side where the women of her caste sat.

  Massaquoit had nothing to say right now to Wequashcook. He would have liked to open up even more space between them, but he knew this would be insulting to Wequashcook, who probably was just as uncomfortable with this seating arrangement, and it would also reveal more to the English than he cared to do. Yet, he could not compel his body to sit any closer. He occupied himself watching the English fill the meetinghouse.

  They came in mostly as families. The better dressed ones took seats on the benches near the front, the men on Woolsey’s side, and the women and children on Catherine’s side. Those whose clothes were coarser, or whose hands and features betokened a greater acquaintance with physical labor sat further back. The benches immediately in front of Massaquoit were occupied by the few young adults who seemed to be servants. Among these was Phyllis, who sat down directly in front of him. She turned her head and nodded. The expression on her face indicated that she felt it right that he was now in the meeting house where he could begin to turn his soul white even if his skin must remain red, and further that she was delighted to have been, in some little way, responsible for his presence. Finally, several Indian women sat on one side of Wequashcook, and an old black man took his place on Massaquoit’s side, although he was careful not to sit too close. The Indian women and the black man wore English clothing, but only Wequashcook sported a hat, which he did not remove.

  When the congregation was seated, Minister Davis strode in carrying an immense book, which he placed on the finely carved pulpit, of polished oak, which contrasted sharply with the simple, unfinished pine benches. Massaquoit recognized the minister as the one who had held his skullcap over the sputtering matchlock so that the soldier could fire again. Now, he saw that same skull cap sitting arrogantly on the minister’s head, and he noted the sharp nose and the closely set eyes, promising himself that he would never forget that face, no matter how many years might pass.

  Minister Davis opened his huge Bible and then looked up. He wore spectacles and his eyes struggled to find those sitting on the back bench, and when his glance settled on Massaquoit he nodded.

  “Sitting among us today,” he intoned, “is a savage, late a participant in the war recently concluded. We have taken it upon ourselves, to serve God and to offer Him thanks for our victory, to bring this savage to Our Lord. May God speed our efforts and soften his hard heart so that he might received His word.”

  Massaquoit felt the eyes of the congregation stare at him, and he set his face into a blank mask. He would not give them the satisfaction of any response. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Wequashcook looking at him, with just the trace of a smile playing on his thin lips.

  He sat through the service as Minister Davis led prayers of thankfulness for the victory in the war, and sought guidance from the English god so that His servants would learn from the recent crisis that their help was only with the Lord, and that they needed to strive to so live according to His teachings that they would not again provoke His anger, for it was their waywardness, no doubt, that had brought the wrath of God down upon them in the form of those hell hounds, the Indians, whose attacks were countenance by God as fitting retribution for their sins.

  Massaquoit sat stunned behind his blank mask, listening to the English wise man offer this explanation for the war, which Massaquoit had seen quite simply as his people’s attempt to secure their ancient lands against the encroachment of the English who seemed determined to spread like the water covering the sands of a beach until his people would be drowned beneath the flood. He found it quite strange, and not a little amusing, that the English now said that because they were bad people, their God had sent him, Massaquoit, and the other Pequot warriors, to remind them of their need to reform their ways.

  The English wise man had been speaking directly to the congregation in a voice that rose in volume in proportion to the blackness of the sin he was describing. As far as Massaquoit could tell, this black sin was part of every person’s nature. It was an illness for which there was no cure, for the illness was so deeply rooted that it could not be pulled out like a weed can be removed from a garden. He found this concept foreign to his understanding of people, his own, other Indians, or the English themselves.

  Minister Davis now paused to look down at the open page of his Bible. His voice affected a sweetness that Massaquoit found disingenuous. He waited for the barb on the smooth shaft.

  “Our text today,” Davis said, is from the Acts of the Apostles where it is written that Our Lord appoints a minister “To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me.

  “Now, then, let us consider the mission of God’s ministers, according to His holy Word, for He says that we must ‘turn them from darkness to light.’ Consider first that those being spoken of are those lost in the hardness of their hearts and in their refusal to accept the grace that is proffered to them. We must turn them so that they may receive their inheritance, turn them from sin to a Christian life.

  “And what is this Christian life, but one that is sanctified, that is, one that is made holy, by God’s free grace that lifts us out of the clutches of Satan, frees us from our love of sin, turns that love of sin into a detestation of its loathsome nature, and trades it for a love of Our Lord and His selfless sacrifice on our behalf.

  “Those who are not sanctified, who are not made new creatures will fall into hell, where they will burn in the fiery furnace for all eternity. There will be no redemption for them, no hope
of relief from the flames. They will look back on their lives as the briefest flicker of a candle, which when it had burned itself out, dropped them into Satan’s claws, which even now are clasping and unclasping themselves waiting to rip apart the souls of the reprobates, and for these there is no longer any hope of succor from God, for they have not been sanctified, they have not heeded God’s ministers, nor have they listened to God’s word, and therefore they are forever doomed to the terrible torments of hell.”

  Massaquoit listened hard, although his expression did not change. The words again rose and fell as though they themselves were either falling into sin or rising into grace. He was familiar with benign and malevolent spirits. He conceived of Manitou, the spirit of spirits in the skies. And he knew of dozens of individual spirits that informed every aspect of the physical world. He tried to reconcile his Manitou with the English God, and here he found common ground. He attempted to find an analogy for Satan and hell. In these, he failed. He knew that when he died, as all people under the sun and moon, he would travel to the land to the southwest where his spirit would live, as it had in his life, among the spirits of his departed family and friends. There would be no fire, any more than there was in his life now in his fire circle. And as for a tormentor like Satan, the concept simply made no sense to him.

  He listened, and he strained to find in the minister’s words something that would clarify these foreign concepts. When it became clear that he would hear no such thing, he fixed his eyes steadily on the minister while he permitted his mind to wander where it chose. Seemingly a moment or two later, but in truth, closer to an hour after he decided that Master Davis was not going to say anything of interest to him, he felt a sharp nudge in his side. He looked down to see Wequashcook’s elbow jabbing him. He stayed the other Indian’s arm with his hand. He looked up to see that the English wise man had shut the covers of his great book, and he had his hands clasped in front of him, and his eyes closed while his lips moved in silent prayer. After a few moments, he snapped his eyes open, smiled at his congregation, and turned on his heel to leave the meetinghouse. He took up a position by the door, and the congregants filed out from their benches in the order of their rank, with those such as Catherine and Woolsey sitting closest to the pulpit leaving first, and then followed by those sitting behind them in a very orderly procession. Massaquoit noted that each English stopped to say a few words to the minister.