The Blind in Darkness

by Stephen Lewis

  “Good,” Catherine said, and she pushed the feather down further, while she ran her other hand over Felicity’s belly. “I feel it moving down.” She removed the feather and Felicity bent over gasping for breath, her spittle dripping down her chin.

  “That was good,” Catherine said. “It will not be long now.”

  And then for the next several contractions, Catherine induced a gagging response in Felicity that increased the pressure on her diaphragm as she struggled for breath. Each time, Catherine held her hand gently over the young woman’s belly, and nodded at the progress. Mistress Worthington had stationed herself behind the stool so she could cradle her daughter’s head. Phyllis held her hand on the other side, and Elizabeth crouched in front of her, offering a rhythmical chanting sound that paralleled the rising and falling intensity of the contractions. Thus engaged, the women did not see Daniel enter the room.

  “Master Worthington is approaching the house,” Daniel said, “and Goody Blodgett is with him.”

  Catherine looked up.

  “Then he may be in time to welcome his grandchild.”

  “What can I say to him?” Daniel asked.

  “Why anything,” Catherine replied, “but keep him out of our way.”

  “But . . .” Daniel tried to continue, but Elizabeth increased the volume of her chanting, and Felicity, as though encouraged, moaned loudly. Daniel shrugged and left the room. Catherine felt the baby’s head start to crown. She ran her fingers over the peritoneum, expecting it to be about to tear, but to her surprise it felt tight but not dangerously so. She raised herself and again applied the feather. This time Felicity did not need encouragement to open her mouth. .

  “That’s it my lovely,” Catherine said. “Swallow until you cannot, and then a little more.”

  Felicity drew the feather down her throat and gagged. Catherine rested her palm on her hard uterus as it contracted even more powerfully. Felicity screamed in pain and then clamped her teeth into Catherine’s finger. The feather fell to the floor. Catherine knew the baby was on its way out. She knelt in front of the birth stool with her hands ready to receive the infant as it slid out.

  “Push, one more time,” Catherine said.

  Elizabeth raised her voice to a keening wail. Phyllis held one of Felicity’s hands, and her mother the other. A loud rumbling of male voices forced itself into the birthing room, but none of the women so much as looked up. “Why what do you mean?” the deeper voice asked. “She is unable to talk with you,” the other, higher pitched voice said, and then there was an angry stomping of heavy feet toward the door.

  The baby slid down into Catherine’s hands, and Felicity dropped back against the arms of Elizabeth who stopped chanting the moment the baby was expelled. The room was silent. Felicity fell back into Elizabeth’s arms with her eyes closed. Phyllis handed Catherine the knife with its blade newly sharpened, and Catherine cut the cord. She held the tiny babe in her arms and she understood why it had come out so easy. She could scarcely feel its weight. She cradled it in her right arm and saw that it was scarcely longer than the distance from her elbow to her outstretched thumb. Its chest barely rose with its breath, so that for a moment Catherine thought it was still born.

  Felicity snapped her eyes open and extended her hands.

  “My babe,” she said, but then she dropped her arms as the afterbirth began.

  “Oh,” she said.

  “It is not quite done,” Catherine said. “Just a little more.”

  She handed the babe to Phyllis and delivered the placenta. She waited nervously, anticipating as she always did at this point an explosion of blood, but to her relief the afterbirth slid out smoothly. She heard labored breathing behind her, and realized that somebody had entered the room while she concentrated on her tasks. She turned to see Samuel Worthington, his face red and beaded with perspiration beneath his wide-brimmed hat, which still carried a layer of snow from the new storm that had begun. Daniel’s hand was grasped ineffectively around the large merchant’s arm, unable to stay Worthington’s movement towards Catherine and the newborn in her arms. Daniel dropped his hand and followed his father-in-law.

  Worthington glanced at his daughter.

  “How does she?” he asked.

  “Well enough,” Catherine said.

  Worthington leaned over to view his grandchild. The snow melted and dripped, and Catherine turned the infant away.

  “And the babe?” he asked.

  “A fine boy, as you can see.”

  “A boy, do you say. Aye that I can see for myself. But does it breathe?”

  “Yes.”

  He pulled off his hat and handed it to Daniel.

  “Let me see him, then,” he demanded.

  Catherine held out the babe. Worthington studied its thin chest until he could assure himself that it was moving. There was no motion otherwise, as the babe’s eyes remained shut, and it did not cry or stretch its tiny limbs. The merchant looked to Elizabeth, still cradling his daughter’s head. And then he looked back down at the babe.

  “I would not have that savage in this room. I heard her chanting as I approached the room. A spell, I tell you, that is what she was doing. Casting her evil spell on this poor misbegotten babe.” He turned back to Daniel. “I told you to turn her out if you saw any reason to suspect her.”

  “I saw none,” Daniel said.

  “The more blind you, then. See you not your child, unable to breathe?”

  Catherine brought the infant to her chest. It opened its eyes and offered a low cry. She cooed to it.

  “It breathes,” Daniel said, “and Felicity has come to depend on the attention of this Indian girl that you yourself gave to us.”

  Catherine smiled at the babe, but in her mind she was smiling at Daniel finally standing up to his father-in-law. Worthington grunted.

  “Barely does it breathe, and I tell you that girl is the cause. She must be closely watched of she is to stay. Mark that she does not whisper under her breath in the presence of the babe, or make unusual gestures with her hands. I have heard that is how they cast their devilish spells.” He turned to Catherine. “And as for your, mistress, Goody Blodgett does inform against your methods with my daughter.”

  “Why, then,” Catherine replied, “she is very much mistaken. And I remind you that it was I taught Goody Blodgett what she now knows about midwifery.”

  “Be that as it may,” Worthington said, “I will hear more of this matter. And until I do, I forbid you to attend my daughter. Look to it Daniel.” He held out his hand, and Daniel placed his hat in it. He stomped out of the room. After he left, Daniel asked Catherine in a barely audible whisper.

  “Will he live?”

  “I must be honest,” Catherine replied, rocking the babe in her arms, whose eyes were again shut. “I do fear. But see to your wife.”

  Elizabeth backed away from the birthing stool, and Phyllis and Mistress Worthington stood aside as Daniel approached his wife. The women left the room to leave the young husband alone with his wife. Catherine carried the babe into the servant’s room and placed it in the cradle. Elizabeth sat down on the bed next to the cradle and rocked it.

  * * * *

  Some time later, Catherine sat with Alice Worthington at the kitchen table, half drunk tankards of groaning beer in front of them. Catherine noted the wrinkles on Alice’s face, and recalled how once they had been able to share intimacies before their husbands’ business differences created a wall between them that neither had the energy nor motivation to breech until this evening. Now, facing the very real prospect that Alice’s first grandchild might not survive until morning, the two women looked at each other, trying to recapture the basis of their friendship, lost so long ago for so little reason. Alice let out a sigh that filled the quiet room.

  “My Nathaniel wanted so to be here for his sister. You remember how close they were as children, how he would pick her up when she fell, how frail she was even then.”

  Catherine recalled the v
ery image she had remembered earlier of young Felicity running as though carried by a breeze, and she nodded.

  “Indeed, I do,” she said.

  “It’s this business with Thomas that has made him so anxious that he could not bide here even knowing her time was so close.”

  Catherine had followed the flow of Alice’s words, anticipating that she would say “business with Indians,” and so she had to shift her attention to the young man she had almost forgotten, the one who disappeared on the night that old man Powell was killed, and whose name, she now recalled, was indeed Thomas.

  “And why is he so taken with that young man?”

  Alice began to answer and then stopped herself. She worked the corners of her mouth as though attempting to make them form the right words.

  “He is the brother of Nathaniel’s intended, as I am sure you have heard.”

  “I have. But your face tells me that is not all there is to it.”

  “I never could fool you, Catherine,” Alice said with a quick smile. “No, there is more, but I do not profess to understand all of it, as my husband took this matter into his own hands.”

  “And what matter would that be?” Catherine asked.

  “Why, sending Thomas off to learn how to farm with that old man.”

  “Hmph,” Catherine said, “he could have found a better mentor.”

  “Ah, but mentoring was not fully the point.”

  Catherine anticipated what Alice did not want to say.

  “There were problems in the house, then,” she said.

  Alice nodded.

  “Between Nathaniel and Thomas?”

  “Yes,” Alice replied, “but I can say no more.”

  “You needn’t.”

  They did not speak for a few moments, and then Alice turned her head in the direction of the servant’s room where the only sound was the creaking of the cradle beneath Elizabeth’s patient foot.

  “Wait, and pray,” Catherine said, and Alice lowered her closed eyes and began moving her lips. A second later, Catherine felt her own prayer for the newborn clinging to life well up inarticulate and powerful within her, and she too closed her eyes and prayed.

  Chapter Five

  The tracks had disappeared in the hardened ground where no snow remained to bear their imprint. Massaquoit imagined himself the fleeing English boy, pushing his way through the thickening forest. Every twenty or thirty yards into the woods Massaquoit’s feeling would be verified by a branch or torn vine, evidence that somebody in considerable and careless haste had passed that place.

  After a while, he found himself in a small opening among the trees. A dried and frozen creek bed, through which a rill of water would again flow in the spring, emerged from behind the screen of trees on the left, crossed the clearing, and then dropped sharply to the right. He concentrated on that creek bed. The boy would now be tired but still fearful. His weariness might lead him to follow the creek bed down so that he could continue to make good speed while recovering his energy. But the drop there was steep, and might have posed too great a challenge. He looked to the left where the creek entered the clearing. He remembered the strong feeling he had earlier when he gazed up into the tree where he could almost see the boy clinging to a branch, and he concluded that fear would have driven the boy to go up. People being hunted are more afraid of an enemies coming down on them than those that might rise up from below. His own bitter experience traveling through the low lying mire of the swamp had taught him that. He remembered wanting, with something approaching desperation, to climb a tree so as to be able to see what was coming toward him, and therefore not be taken unawares by his pursuer. The boy would have been moved by the same emotions, and so Massaquoit turned to follow the creek bed as it worked its way back among the trees and toward an elevation from which it must start.

  The grade was gentle for a quarter of a mile, and Massaquoit congratulated himself on making the right choice. He felt that the panicked boy had preceded him on this path, and before long he was sure as he stood next to a broken branch hanging over a sudden drop in the creek bed, a place where the boy must have stumbled and grabbed the branch to keep himself from falling. And there ahead on the ground was the amputated branch itself. From this point, the creek bed narrowed until it was no more than a couple of feet wide, as the grade rose sharply and then leveled into a rocky plateau. One rock, in particular, caught Massaquoit’s attention. It jutted out from the side of the creek bed, offering a sharp protuberance, which would cut anything brushing against it with any force. And there, lying on the ground, beneath that protuberance was a piece of fabric. He picked it up, and recognized the homespun wool out of which the English shaped their clothing. The piece of cloth was an undistinguished gray, but on its edge was a dark red, almost black stain of dried blood. The English boy, in his haste, had caught his leg on this rock, torn his breeches, and left some of his blood behind.

  He tucked the cloth into his pouch. Although the sun was shining, he now felt the cold wind sting his cheek as he looked at the treeless plateau punctuated by a scattering of huge boulders. The creek bed, here not much more than a groove, crossed the plateau and then ascended through the vertical rock facing at the edge of the plateau. He climbed onto one of these boulders and surveyed the area.

  He could see the creek bed as it wended its way down the hill toward the clearing just now visible through the tops of trees. He looked down the other side of the hill and his eyes focused on a narrow line that worked its way through the woods on that side curving to the north and west, and he knew he was looking at a footpath used by various local tribes for hunting, war, or commerce. He stared as far along the path as he could and there at the most distant point he thought he saw a line of black specks, looking like a file of ants against the white of the snow, moving away from him, but he knew well that at this distance his eyes could be deceiving him. He lay down on the boulder and shielded his eyes from the sun, which was sliding toward the western horizon. The ant-like figures seemed to have gathered into a tight knot, which no longer moved. The sun’s rays came at him on almost a horizontal plane providing a hint of warmth to his back, but his belly felt as though it were freezing to the boulder. He had almost decided that his eyes must have fooled him when he saw a gray wisp float up from the edge of the path. Within a few moments, the wisp thickened into a steady stream of smoke lifting, he knew, from a campfire, so there had been movement, and whoever it was had made camp and were now warming themselves by a fire while he lay on cold stone tracking a frightened English boy, and he wondered, for a moment, just how he had placed himself in this ridiculous position.

  The more pressing question was who was at that campfire. The most usual travelers along that path were Iroquois coming down from the north to trade or sometimes to harass the English, as they had allied themselves with the French to the north, or perhaps Narragansetts traveling in the opposite direction, probably more for commerce than for war. He felt alienated from both of these. The Narragansetts had fought with the English at the fort where his wife and son died, and he himself, as a Pequot sachem, had had tense relationships with them while he had several times skirmished with the northerners as they encroached upon Pequot hunting and trading territories. Whoever these travelers were, they would not be friendly toward him. Whether they might be responsible for the old English farmer’s death was another question, and one closer to explaining why his bones now ached from absorbing the chill of the rock on which he lay.

  He stood up and stretched his arm toward the dying sun as though to embrace its feeble warmth. He looked to his left where the boulders gave way and the creek bed climbed the last steep incline to a crest on which grew one thin and scraggly pine, and next to it, just visible, was what appeared to be an opening into the side of the top of the hill. The thought struck him that in that cave he might find his quarry, huddled and even now staring back at him. Well, he thought, let him sit and worry for a while. He could not go anywhere if indeed he were there. />
  He turned to study the direction from which he had come. He saw nothing, and yet he knew that if his eyes could search through the trees that blocked his view of the bottom of the hill he had just climbed he would soon see a file of English, and at its head would be a man wearing a beaver hat, for he had no reason to doubt either Wequashcook’s skill as a tracker, every bit as good as his own, nor the old Indian’s inclination to make himself of use to the English.

  He sat down on the boulder to consider his options. He could climb the hill, approach the cave, and capture the boy, if he were there. But the boy who had just witnessed his master’s death might not believe that he would be offering him protection. Then he would have a troublesome captive on his hands while he waited for the English to arrive. He could, on the other hand, go down to meet the English and show them where their prey was, but this idea did not sit well either. He did not want to give Wequashcook any help, nor did he trust the English to recognize his own motives. Perhaps the best thing to do would be to take the boy back to Catherine and let her decide what to do. That would be difficult, for he would have Wequashcook breathing down his neck, but he concluded it was best.

  He clambered down from the boulder and walked to the groove in the rock face. There was clearly no way to climb to the cave from this point, and he began to think more highly of the English boy for having found a hiding place so secure from a frontal attack. He worked his way to the left and found nothing but sheer rock, virtually impossible to climb. However, when he tried the right of the rock wall he discovered a gentler grade where his feet could find purchase and his hands openings to hold onto as he lifted himself up. From this angle, he could climb toward the top of the hill directly in a line with the pine tree that stood sentinel to the side of the cave opening. He started up, placing his foot on a flat surface in front of a fair sized boulder. Once standing on that narrow platform, he hoisted himself to the top of the boulder. As he did, he looked up just in time to see the sun, which was sitting on the rim of the hill, glint off something bright and then he detected movement from behind the tree heading toward the cave opening. However, he was now looking directly into the sun, and he could not be sure of what he had just seen.