The Dumb Shall Sing

by Stephen Lewis

  “Honey,” she said.

  “Right,” Catherine replied. She poured a generous amount of honey into the pot and put it to simmer in the fireplace. She tasted it with a large wooden spoon. Her tongue enjoyed the sweetness, but her tooth rebelled. She dropped the spoon back into the pot and clutched her jaw.

  “That tooth,” Phyllis said. “I thought I saw Goody Hawkins on the road as I came back from the pasture.”

  “It is the honey,” Catherine said. “But I do believe this is sweet enough to entice Martha to eat.

  * * * *

  When Catherine and Phyllis arrived at the Jameson house, Ann was crouched on the floor next to her mother who sat with erect spine in her chair, her tongue, as it had been, thrust between her clenched teeth. There was no sign of Henry. Catherine placed the pot on the floor next to Martha’s chair, and then she motioned for Phyllis to stand by the door.

  “You can look out for Goodman Jameson,” she said.

  “I can go seek my father,” Ann said.

  “No,” Catherine replied, “it will be better if you stay here with your mother while I tend to her. Phyllis will let us know when he comes.”

  “I can tell her where to seek him.”

  “That is not necessary, child.”

  Ann looked warily from Phyllis to Catherine and then squeezed her mother’s hand. Martha did not respond.

  “Mistress Williams is here now,” she said, “with something for you to eat.”

  Martha looked at Catherine for a moment, and then shook her head.

  “Yes, mother, you must,” Ann said. “Please Mistress Williams, you see how it is with her.”

  “I do, child.” Catherine pulled over a chair and sat down next to Martha. She uncovered the pot and dipped a long handled wooden spoon into it. She lifted the spoon toward Martha’s mouth. Martha turned her head away with such violence that the tendons on her neck bulged. She kept her head turned as far as it would go while she stared back at the approaching spoon as though it were an instrument of evil. Her pupils were turned tight into the corners of her eyes, leaving the whites to catch the glare of the smouldering coals in the fireplace. Catherine guided the spoon slowly toward the protruding tongue. Just as it neared her mouth, Martha swiped it away with her hand. Catherine put the spoon back into the pot and caressed the back of Martha’s neck with her free hand.

  “There is no hurry, no hurry at all,” she said. She continued stroking for several minutes, and the tendons disappeared beneath the skin of Martha’s neck. Martha turned her head toward Catherine. “That’s the way,” Catherine said. She lifted the spoon from the pot. “Now you don’t have to swallow this. I am just going to place a drop or two on that poor tongue of yours, that looks so dry that it is like to fall out of your mouth if you were to open it.” She raised the spoon, and Martha started to turn away again. Ann threw her arms around her mother.

  “Please, mother, for me.”

  Martha’s eyes glistened, and she lifted her head up and down in a barely discernible gesture of concession. Catherine tilted the spoon so that a drop of the stew, more honey than anything else, fell onto Martha’s tongue. The woman’s jaws opened against her conscious will, and her tongue retracted into her mouth. Immediately, she thrust it out again and set her upper teeth on it so as to prevent it from again disobeying her intention to starve herself. But Catherine tilted the spoon again, and this time a larger, thick globule fell onto the tongue. Martha seemed to set her jaw muscles against opening. Catherine stroked the jaw where it hinged, and again Martha’s mouth opened enough to accommodate the tongue as it retracted. She swallowed and her throat muscles, as though unused to working, tightened and she gasped.

  “Why, I do believe you have forgotten how to eat,” Catherine said. “But if you practice, you will remember.’

  Catherine gave the spoon to Ann.

  “Be ready, child,” she said. Then she ran her thumbs over Martha’s lips and then back from the corner of her mouth. She massaged this place with growing pressure until Martha’s mouth opened. The woman’s eyes opened wider and darted about the room as though looking for a presence that only she could see. Her glance came to rest on the cradle in the corner of the room. She began to shake but her mouth remained open. Ann looked in the direction her mother was staring, and then placed herself between her mother’s eyes and the cradle. Martha stopped shuddering, and Catherine lifted the spoon to her mouth and tilted it, and dropped in a full measure of the stew. Martha started to swallow, and then her throat convulsed. Catherine stroked her throat muscles until they stopped spasming and began a more normal swallowing motion.

  “How does it feel to have something in your belly again?” Catherine asked. She brought another spoonful to Martha’s lips, and this time the woman accepted the food without resistance, and swallowed it easily.

  “One more, for now,” Catherine said. “We do not want to feed you more than you can take comfortably, after not eating for so long.”

  Martha swallowed the last spoonful, and then kept her mouth open, like a baby bird waiting to be fed another worm. Catherine pressed her jaws shut, and Martha let herself collapse against the back of her chair. After a few moments, she started to rock back and forth. A little while later, her face reddened, and the pupil of her eyes expanded. Flecks of saliva dribbled out of the corner of her mouth. She started to mumble inaudible sounds. Catherine leaned closer, and cupped her ear. Ann, too, came forward to hear what her mother might be saying to break her silence, but Catherine motioned her back.

  “No, child,” she said. “It is better that I first hear what your mother has to say.” Ann stopped where she was, but still leaned forward. Catherine positioned her ear close enough to Martha’s mouth to feel the woman’s breath.

  “Try,” Catherine urged.

  Martha moved her lips again, and a hissing sound came out.

  “Henry?” Catherine tried. “Me?”

  Martha nodded her head.

  “Henry,” Martha said, and then her voice sank to a whisper Catherine could not hear.

  “He’s coming up the path,” Phyllis said, and a moment later, Henry was at the door. Catherine remained bending toward Martha. She looked past Catherine’s shoulder to see her husband. Again she said her husband’s name, but this time she continued in words Catherine could hear. Then she stopped.

  “What says she?” Henry demanded.

  “Your name,” Catherine said, “as you came to the door.”

  “Is that all?”

  “All that I understood,” Catherine replied.

  Henry scowled.

  “You would be telling me all of it, wouldn’t you?”

  “Certainly.”

  He stepped closer and placed his fingers on his wife’s face. They looked huge and coarse against Martha’s pale skin. He pressed his forefinger against her lips. It seemed to have a piece of dirt or perhaps manure wedged under the nail.

  “You must have gotten some food into her, haven’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And she said my name?”

  “Yes.”

  “And no more?”

  “No more.”

  “You can leave now, then, Mistress. And I thank you.”

  “I will be back in the morning, to see how she does,” Catherine said.

  “I’ll send the girl again,” Henry replied, if there is need for you.”

  * * * *

  Massaquoit steered Margaret along the path that led deeper into the island. His feet knew the ground as well as his eyes, for this is where he used to come in the summers with his wife and son. At the end of the path he knew he would find the wigwam he had built right before the war. In it now, instead of his wife and son, he hoped to find his wife’s mother. She had been on the island when the fort on the mainland had been overrun and burned by the English. He did not know if she would have been able to see smoke and flames or to hear the screams of those whose flesh was being roasted by the fires started by the English, or whose bellie
s were being ripped open by the swords of the English, but he knew that she would have learned of the disaster before the ashes were cold and the echo of the last scream had died over the waters that separated them from their massacred friends and relatives. She would have realized that this island was the safest place for her to remain.

  Margaret stumbled over a root that grew across the path and fell down to one knee. He offered her hand, and she allowed him to assist her back to her feet. She reached her hand into her pocket and removed her rosary beads.

  “When we get where we are going, do you think I could pray?”

  He held out his hand for the beads. She hesitated and dropped one end into his palm, while holding onto the end that had the wooden cross.

  “You pray with these?”

  “Yes,” she said. “But they have not let me since I have come here.”

  He let his end drop and she gathered the beads into her hands.

  “Maybe you will teach me how to use them some time.”

  “Do you mock me?”

  “No,” he said, “for I would be happy to teach you how to pray to my gods.”

  They had come to the end of the path where it opened into a small clearing that was filled mostly by the wigwam at its center. The wigwam was clearly intended for warm weather, as its exterior was covered only in thin strips of woven reeds that now swung softly in a light breeze. In front of the wigwam, an old woman crouched over a fire. She poked a long, forked stick into the embers and lifted the coiled body of a snake. Its eyes stared out of its charred head. On the edge of the fire sat a flat stone, which was serving to heat two round loaves of bread. The woman placed the snake back into the embers and covered it with ashes. She looked up and nodded at Massaquoit. He gestured to Margaret who stood behind him as though seeking shelter behind his broad back.

  “I have this English woman with me. Please speak in her language.”

  “Are you hungry, my son?” the old woman asked.

  “Yes,” he replied, “but it is this white woman who must be fed first.”

  The old woman’s face, already deeply lined, wrinkled even more profoundly as she contracted her brows. The gesture of bemused confusion was one Massaquoit realized, with a start, he was used to seeing in another face. He studied her eyes, and then he understood. In their unusual roundness and brilliant black color they were the eyes of his dead wife in the face of her mother.

  “Did you capture her?” the old woman asked.

  “I will explain to you later,” Massaquoit said. “She is in my care.’

  The woman motioned Margaret forward. Margaret stepped out from behind Massaquoit and approached the fire. The woman lifted the snake back out of the embers and held it out for Margaret to see.

  “This is almost cooked,” she said. “Then you can eat.”

  Margaret let out an audible gasp, and crossed herself.

  “Hungry as I am I will not touch that creature, in the very form of the Devil himself.”

  The woman looked at Massaquoit, and pointed at her own forehead.

  “Is she alright?”

  “Just give her some of the bread when it is ready.” He motioned for Margaret to squat next to the woman. “This is Minneseewa. She is my wife’s mother, and mine.”

  “Can you eat bread?” the woman asked.

  Margaret smoothed her skirt over her belly. “That I can,” Margaret said, “and gladly.”

  Minneseewa kept her eyes on Margaret’s hands, which had remained on her stomach as though holding it up. Margaret removed her hands under the old woman’s glance, and then thrust out her chin.

  “I will not hide the fact. I am with child.”

  Minneseewa nodded, and the lines of her wrinkled face relaxed into a smile.

  “Mistress Williams did not tell me this,” Massaquoit said.

  “I am happy that she did not.”

  “You do not have a man?” Minneseewa asked.

  Margaret blushed and shook her head.

  “My son is a good man,” Minneseewa said, and her voice broke into a cackle.

  “Why the idea!” Margaret said.

  “Let us eat,” Massaquoit replied. He squatted next to the fire. Minneseewa handed him the forked stick, and he used it to lift up the snake. He picked up a knife lying next to the fire and cut the snake’s head off with one quick stroke, and tossed it into the embers. Then he sliced off a piece of meat and ate it. As he chewed, he saw Margaret, white faced, staring at the head. With the blade of the knife, he covered it with ashes. A little color returned to her cheeks. She stared at the bread.

  “Is it done?”

  He stabbed the bread with the knife and held it out toward her. She blew on it, and then removed it from the blade. She nibbled a piece off with just her front teeth, and chewed it slowly. Then she took a fuller bite, and did not stop until the round loaf was gone. The old woman smiled a toothless smile. Massaquoit, meanwhile had finished the first hunk of snake meat, and then another. He rose. The woman got up and walked to his side.

  “Wequashcook,” she said. “He was here a few days ago.”

  “I am not surprised,” Massaquoit replied. “In the morning, I will go back to the water to see if we are safe. If I do not come back, take the English woman deeper into the woods and wait for me.”

  She looked up at the full moon. “In a day, or two,” she said, “the moon will be asleep. It will be good time to hide from the English.”

  He walked into the wigwam. Margaret followed, the last piece of the bread in her hand.

  “Do you mind?” she asked. “I am afraid.”

  He pointed to a woven mat on side of the wigwam, and he lay down on another on the other side.

  “Go to sleep. The old woman will stay up and watch.”

  * * * *

  While he was still some distance from the beach, Massaquoit knew that the English had already arrived although the sun had just risen. He had heard their voices before he made out the sound of the waves slapping against the shore, Apparently, stealth was not part of their plan when stalking their prey. He left the path and made his way through the woods. The birds stopped their chirping at his approach, and he wondered if the English would notice that sudden silence. He did not think so. When he reached the edge of the woods, he crawled forward through the underbrush on his belly. He lifted his eyes just high enough to see the beach. Two English soldiers were no more than twenty feet away, starting a fire for their breakfast. Another group of a dozen or so were sitting on the rocks at water’s edge, near where they had beached their shallop. One man sat in the rear of the shallop. He was wearing a large beaver hat.

  Massaquoit noted the hat and shrugged. He had expected as much. He realized he could wait for the English to eat and then make their clumsy way inland, probably along the path. If he sat still, he was sure they would not see him. Then he could get the canoe and make good his escape. At worst, he might have to contend with one or two English left behind to guard the campsite on the beach. He could overpower them, or outrun them.

  But then he thought of the English woman waiting for him with his wife’s mother. He realized that she had changed in his mind from a necessary burden imposed upon him as a condition of his freedom to a person whose fate he cared about. He did not want to see her hanging at the end of an English rope.

  He crept backwards on his belly to a safe distance, and then he stood up. He made his way back onto the path, and followed it to the beach as though he were unaware of the English there. He froze, as though in shock, as he stepped onto the sand. He waited for a soldier to notice him. After a while, one looked up from hanging a pot over the fire and saw him. He nudged his companion, and they both grabbed their weapons, one a pike, and the other a musket, and approached him. He knew that the musket being lowered at him had not been made ready to fire. The pike, on the other hand, did pose a threat. The one carrying the pike called loudly enough for his mates on the rocks to hear.

  “Here now, what is this?”
/>   The other soldiers followed his voice and stared at Massaquoit. He bowed toward them.

  “Good morning, English,” he said. “Am I in time for breakfast?”

  The one holding the pike stepped forward and pressed it against his belly. Massaquoit recognized him at once as the same one who had cut him with that weapon on the ship. However, it was clear from the soldier’s expression, mostly blank but colored in part by fear, and in part by hostility, that he did not recognize Massaquoit.

  “What do you here?” the soldier demanded.

  “Why, I live here.”

  The soldier advanced closer and lifted his the blade of his pike up beneath Massaquoit’s chin, forcing his face first one direction and then another.

  “Don’t I know you?” he asked.

  Massaquoit shrugged.

  “I live here,” he repeated. “I always live here. Sometimes I trade furs with the English. Maybe I trade with you?”

  “No, I never traded furs with no savage,” the soldier said.

  “Maybe with somebody who looks like me?”

  “No, not that neither,” the soldier insisted. He jabbed the blade of his pike against Massaquoit’s arm where the musket ball had opened the skin. “I know how you came to get that, I do. You just stay where you are.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Massaquoit saw the lieutenant who had been on the boat striding toward them. The officer unsheathed his sword as he approached. The soldiers who had been on the rocks gathered behind the officer, so Massaquoit now faced the whole company. Lieutenant Waters put his hand on the soldier’s pike and pushed it away from Massaquoit’s arm.

  “So, then,” he said, “what is Mistress Williams’ savage doing here on this island where we just happen to be looking for the woman that escaped from jail, helped by a savage that probably looks very much like this one standing in front of us?”

  Massaquoit moved his head in rhythm to the lieutenant’s words and forced an uncomprehending smile onto his face.

  “I live here,” he said.

  “Maybe you do, and maybe you don’t,” the lieutenant said, “but I think where you was last living was that very same jail.”