The Blind in Darkness

by Stephen Lewis

  “He did, but to little effect. And, further, you can instruct him to leash his dog.”

  “His dog?”

  “The young man he has recently taken back into his household, and who was most responsible for this morning’s difficulty.”

  “That would be Frank Mapleton.”

  The voice came from the side of the fireplace, where Dorothy had been sitting, as though in a trance, throughout this conversation.

  “Know you him, then?” Woolsey asked.

  “No. But I have heard of him.”

  “What do you hear child?” Catherine asked.

  “That he will do what a man pays him to do, and that his master has plenty of coin to have him do his bidding.” She stood up. “But it is Nathaniel you must look to.”

  “How is that?” Catherine asked.

  “People say he was very attached to this boy Thomas. In truth, that is what I have heard, and I have no reason not to believe it.” She sat back down and stared at the fire.

  “Wondrous strange,” Catherine muttered.

  Woolsey shrugged.

  “That she is, but she tends the fire well, as she does her other household chores.”

  “And you need not fear her chattering.”

  Woolsey permitted himself a small smile.

  “No,” he said, “I do not.”

  * * * *

  Massaquoit squatted in the snow, fifty yards from Isaac Powell’s house. It was late afternoon and the sun had already slid to an acute angle as it lowered toward the horizon. It shone a bright yellow ball, yet distant and feeble, so that the heat its glow promised was illusory, and the air remained frigid. Massaquoit, though, welcomed the cold. He felt as though he would like to strip to his naked flesh and roll in the snow until its icy white crystals covered every inch of his body. Then, perhaps, the hot rage that had been welling in him since they left the meetinghouse might be cooled.

  Vengeance they want, he thought, but what do they know. Their wise man says that vengeance belongs to their god. Just like the English, to thrust off their responsibilities on their god. Vengeance is mine, he said to himself, and I have not taken it, not for my wife, or my child, or my comrades tossed into the ocean by these English, jabbering about their god.

  He grabbed a handful of snow and felt is coldness numb his fingers. When it had melted, he ran the cold water over his face, and then he took another handful, and this time he drank the water into which it melted.

  He looked toward the house. Inside was a white man he had never seen, lying on the floor with his head riven. He was not anxious to view that sight. He stood up, as though with great effort, and he looked at the yellow stain at his feet. He had squatted on this spot a half an hour before to examine this trace of some animal, possibly a dog. And he had seen the faint imprint of the paws heading off into the woods on the right. For some reason, he knew that he must follow those tracks, but first he steeled himself to confront Isaac Powell for the first and last time.

  The door was ajar, but a low mound of wind driven snow had piled up against it. He yanked the door hard, and when it would not move, he peered in through the crack. He saw the shape of the body, lying on the floor only a few feet inside the door, but there was not enough light for him to see clearly. He hesitated, aware that the English would probably explain the half open door as presenting some message from their god: he had heard enough of their sermons to realize how fond they were of so explaining such simple facts of the natural world as a drift of snow against a door. He thought for a moment longer, but could not come up with an interpretation such as the English favored, and so he knelt and began scooping the ice encrusted snow from the door. It was slow going, and his fingers ached after a few moments, but he persisted until he had cleared the snow level with the bottom of the door. He stood up and pulled the door open a few more inches.

  The setting sun shone over his shoulder and landed on the body, giving it a preternatural aura, with what appeared to be a reddish corona about the dead man’s head. He pulled hard on the door, forcing it through the ice encrusted snow that he had not succeeded in scraping away. Now the sun more fully illuminated the body, and he could see that the red about the man’s head was not from the sun’s rays. It was his blood.

  The man was lying on his back with his arms were stretched over his head, and his legs sprayed. Two pools of dried blood gathered where his hands should have been. Massaquoit felt a chill wind that seemed to come from within the house, and he knew that the dead man’s spirit was pushing him back. He steeled himself against the spirit, for he had to examine the body more closely. He lowered his shoulder as though forcing his body through a gale, and pushed himself into the house.

  He stepped to the side of the body where the cold wind seemed a little weaker, and he dropped to one knee. The reports he had heard this morning from Wequashcook and from the English, whose snippets of conversation had drifted to him as he sat in the meetinghouse waiting for the service to begin, all agreed that the man whose body now lay in front of him had been killed by an ax or hatchet that had split his head. And he saw the dull glint of a hatchet blade several feet to the side of the corpse, as though it had been tossed there after its work had been completed. The man’s head was a mass of torn flesh and dried blood.

  He took a deep breath and leaned over to look more closely, being careful not to touch the body. Something brushed the back of his neck, and he shivered against the shock of that contact. He turned around, but he saw nothing, and heard only the wind howling outside of the house. Yet, he knew the man’s spirit was very angry with him, and it was only because his own manitou was stronger that he was not at that moment blown back out of the house to die under a mound of suffocating snow. His spirit’s strength would not be able to contest that of the dead man for very long.

  He studied the head wound. It seemed to start on his forehead and then rip up into the old man’s white hair, and this area was solid with clots of blood. He then saw that in the center of the wound was a round hole entering the skull. The light seemed to dim, as though the sun were now behind a cloud, and he strained to examine the wound against the background of shadows that had now crept into the house. Suddenly, he heard the roar of the wind outside increase and then there was a loud thud as the door closed behind him and he was plunged into darkness.

  He felt himself being drawn down toward the body, and with all his strength he pushed against that force and made himself stagger to his feet. He reached in the darkness for the door, found it, and hurled his body against it. It opened, and he tumbled into the snow. For a moment, he thought his vision of suffocation beneath a mound of snow was about to be realized, but then he understood that he had only fallen, and he could get up again if he so chose.

  He rose and shook the snow off of him. He looked at the door behind him with a shudder, and vowed that he would not trouble the dead again. He set his step away from the house and toward the spot where he had seen the animal tracks. The clouds that had been obscuring the sun had been pushed aside by the constant wind, and he knew he had about a half an hour of daylight left to see where those tracks led.

  He found the spot where he had been kneeling in the snow, and there were the tracks heading off into the woods. Judging by the distance between the paw prints, the animal that made those tracks was walking rather than running, and not walking very fast at that, as the prints were close together, and the impressions fairly deep to indicate the animal was not lifting its legs very much as it moved along. He followed the tracks for about another ten feet, and then he noticed a peculiarity, for between the paw prints another, dull line appeared as though the animal were dragging something. That, he figured, would account for the slowness of its movements. It had found, or killed, something that it was dragging into the secrecy of the woods.

  He did not have to proceed to much further to uncover this mystery. Just as he reached the first row of pines at the edge of the cleared space surrounding the house, he saw something lying stil
l in the snow. He had no weapon with him, so he stood absolutely still until his muscles ached. The animal did not lift up its head or show any movement at all. He took another step and waited. Again, there was no movement from the animal. He knelt down and picked up a small ball of snow. He tossed it beyond the animals so that if it started it might run toward him rather than away, but it did not move at all. He walked briskly to it and looked down at the frozen shape of a black dog, lying on its side, its ribs clearly visible beneath its flanks. Next to its muzzle lay a human hand, and nearby another that still retained the bandage in which Catherine had wrapped it.

  The dog’s fur was coated with ice. Its legs were bent as though it had been trying to gather itself to rise from the snow when its strength had failed, and it had collapsed. Its eyes were wide, staring at the hand it had hoped to consume. Its mouth hung open, with its tongue jutting out, frozen at an unnatural angle. It was the mouth that drew Massaquoit’s attention and he knelt down to examine it. He needed to get a better look, and he touched the stiff hairs protruding from its lower jaw. Nothing happened, and so he concluded that no spirit was hovering nearby to protect the dog as it had the man in the house. He lifted the head to peer into the mouth. He saw worn down molars but where the fangs should be were only the broken stumps of ruined teeth. The animal would have had a difficult time tearing a piece of flesh off that hand, and maybe it had died trying.

  He stood up. He had perhaps a quarter of an hour of light, and he wanted to make the best use of it. He had no enthusiasm for returning to this place. He left the dog and the hands to feed whatever animal might wander by, and he trotted back toward the house, but he gave it a wide birth, circling it so that he could approach its back. As he expected, because he had seen the logs piled up by the front, there was no rear door where wood chopping might otherwise have been done. He stepped carefully toward the corner of the house, looking at the snow both on the side and to the rear. He saw nothing until he changed his direction to go more directly to the back. There coming from around the house on the other side and moving past the house and into the woods beyond were tracks. He walked toward the house keeping his eyes on the tracks until he came to a place where the snow had been packed down beneath a confusion of impressions. He studied the area until his eye rested on a shiny object just poking through the crusted snow. He knelt down and put it in a pouch he wore around his waist.

  He looked again at the line of tracks as they headed away from the house and towards the woods. They seemed to have been made by boots over human feet, and there were two sets emerging from the trampled area. Judging by the distance between the steps of the smaller prints, that person had been running. The larger tracks were closer together, as though the owner of those feet had been more slowly pursuing the smaller individual. He followed the tracks into the woods for a few feet, and then he lost them in the enveloping shadows, as once again a cloud blocked the sun.

  He turned his steps back toward Newbury.

  * * * *

  He was weary and shaken by his encounter with the dead man, and puzzled by the dead dog and the tracks leading off into the woods. He made his way slowly, without his usual attention to his environment, which was now in darkness, as he sought to recover his mental and emotional equilibrium. That is why he was taken so unawares by the glare of torches that started out of the blackness surrounding Catherine’s house.

  He was still fifty yards from the house, and he was sure that none of the people gathered there would be able to see him. Still, he stopped in his tracks, and then moved with deliberate slowness into the line of trees that edged the path he had been walking. He worked his way ten feet into the shelter of the forest, and then he proceeded toward the house. As he got closer, he could count the torches to the number of six, formed in a ragged line between his wigwam and the front of Catherine’s house. A few more steps, and he could begin to hear a chanting rising above the steady roar of the wind, which had not abated as night fell. They were chanting the same words they had in the meetinghouse earlier in the day.

  “No Christian, he,” they said, again and again, louder and louder, their angry voices contesting with the wind.

  He edged closer, keeping the trees between him and the torches. He stopped behind a thick trunked oak that had been standing in that spot long before the English had come. century. It was surrounded by a deep drift, so that he was standing in snow that reached well above his knees, and he could soon feel the chill working its way through his breeches. The chanting had stopped and for a moment he thought somebody must have seen him. He stood motionless, and his legs began to feel numb. He peered around the trunk of the tree just enough to get a clear view. Somebody had come out of the house and that was why the chanting had stopped. The person was short and round and she was carrying a candle. Behind her stood a bulkier figure.

  “Get on home, now,” Catherine said, and she waved the lit candle in a sweeping gesture toward the road that led back to Newbury. She shivered as the wind rose, causing the torches to flicker. The flames dipped before the breeze and then flared back to life when it died down. Her eyes watered against the cold and in response to the changing light, almost dark and then unevenly bright again as the fires danced. She pulled her cloak about her and then turned to Phyllis.

  “You must go to Master Woolsey. Wake him if you must.”

  “I cannot leave you,” she said.

  “It is not me they want.”

  “Well, I know that. But they will tire of waiting for him, and then they will find you a target for their anger at him.”

  “I do not think it. But that is why I send you to Master Woolsey. In the event I am wrong. Go. There is no time now for your stubborn disobedience.”

  “Hmph!” Phyllis said, the sound an explosion of breath in the frigid air. But she began to walk toward the torches. Catherine tugged on her arm.

  “It would be well to go into the house and then leave again.”

  “Well, it might be. But I will walk straight ahead. I do not think they will stop me.” She took another step, and the line of torches closed into a tight arc that threatened to enclose her.

  “Where might you want to be going?” said a voice from the center of the line.

  Catherine strained to see the face belonging to the voice, and recognized the ragged young man from the meeting, only now he was wearing a substantial great coat with bright brass buttons that reflected the glare of the torches.

  “Is it you then,” she asked, “doing Master Worthington’s bidding and disrupting the peace of my household?”

  “No, Mistress,” Frank Mapleton replied. His face was clean now, but the smirk from the morning remained. “It is the Lord’s business I do, I warrant.”

  “I do not think so,” Catherine said.

  “Step aside,” Phyllis said, but instead the torchbearers on the end of the line closed toward her, like the pincers of a scorpion, leaving Frank as its venomous tail.

  “I cannot,” Frank said. “I have business with the savage you keep tethered here about.”

  Phyllis lowered her shoulder as though to force her way through. Frank tilted his torch until it was directly in front of her face. She stopped and stared hard at him, its red glare matching the red anger in her face. The flames flickered no more than an inch or two from her. Catherine grabbed Phyllis’ arm and pulled her back. She, herself stepped forward until the torch confronted her face. She waited, and Frank lifted the torch away from her.

  “We want your savage, Mistress,” he said. ”

  “That you cannot have,” she replied.

  “My mate was living with that old farmer,” Frank said. “Maybe your savage can tell me where he was taken.”

  “We want your savage,” the other torchbearers said, and then repeated the cry from the morning, “No, Christian, he.”

  “Nor you,” Catherine shouted over their voices, but she knew that these young men, for that is what she now saw they were, all under the spell of Frank, would not be d
eterred by her words. And as her shout blended with the wind, they all took a step forward. Catherine turned back to Phyllis.

  “Let us go back into the house. You do remember my telling you how much my John like to hunt, do you not?”

  Phyllis looked at her blankly.

  “I will explain,” Catherine said. “In the house.”

  * * * *

  From his vantage point, Massaquoit watched the torches advance on Catherine. He fought the urge to run forward, and he breathed a small sigh when he saw Catherine and Phyllis walk unmolested into the house. He waited to see if the little mob would follow, but the torches remained in the curved line that had moments before threatened to close on the two women. He debated the question for only a moment, and the answer came swiftly. He could not place himself between the mob and the women. He was only one, and even if he succeeded, he would reveal himself and invite being hunted down. Further, he did not know whether the women would decide to co-operate with the English boys now surrounding the house. He could not be sure they would protect him. He had no choice, and so he trotted off through the woods in a direction that would bring him to the frozen swamp.

  After a quarter of a mile feeling his way slowly through the dark shadows of the woods he reached a clearing, piled deep in virgin snow. The moon had risen while he was in the shelter of the trees, and it now cast its soft yellow light on the white of the rolling drifts. He did not think anyone would follow him here, but he remembered the vicious glint in the eye of the ragged young man and he could still hear in his memory the chant expressing the English hatred for him, and so he chose to take no chances.

  He stepped into the snow and made deliberate tracks through it to a path on the southeast corner of the square edged clearing. His tracks led to a path he would not take. Instead, he retraced his steps, this time keeping on his toes so as not to mar the formed outlines of his feet pointing in the direction he wanted any pursuer to think he had taken. When he reached the side of the clearing where he had begun, he stepped back into the woods and worked his way around to the southwest corner, where another, barely visible path led off to the swamp.