The Pilgrim

by Hugh Nissenson

  Some in the crowd cheered; others grumbled at the prospect of crossing the sea.

  Captain Green said, “’Tis well for you to groan. Let us now pray together that during our voyage God tempers the ruthless tempests of the deep.”

  I could not bring myself to beg forgiveness for killing the savage with the big nose. I prayed to be able to pray again.

  • • •

  The next day, we sacked the deserted Indian village. We stole some five-and-thirty bushels of seed corn, along with five beaver skins, tobacco pipes carved from stone, clay pots with thin walls and round bottoms, and various and sundry ornaments, viz., bone beads, shell and stone pendants, and bundles of eagle feathers, &c., all of which were to be sold in England. I found two brass bells. Had they belonged to Rigdale? I shook them. Their jangling called up no memories of my friend. I remembered without remorse the crippled little Indian maiden who would go hungry next winter because we Englishmen had stolen her people’s seed corn.

  Standish set ten men to stand watch all the following five nights and days at the stockade’s fence lest the savages we fought at the swamp attack us. They never showed themselves.

  I moped about. I lived on the verge of tears but never fell to weeping. I ached all over. I was unable to sleep, save for an hour or so toward dawn. I wandered about the stockade, then lay abed for two days. I could not keep my victuals down. I was tortured with divers affrights, viz., I was scared that I would starve to death.

  On the morning of the third day, Green lovingly fed me a bowl of nokake, one spoonful at a time. I held it down. He said he was taking forty beaver skins back to England, which were worth five shillings each in London.

  Said I, “A pox on money! Rigdale once said to me that the Lord lured us into this wilderness to speak to our hearts. Alas, mine hath gone deaf.”

  Later in the morning, Standish brought me my knapsack with Wittuwamat’s head therein. It buzzed with fat, black flies and stank of rotting meat.

  Standish said, “God give you a good morrow, Master Wentworth.”

  “And to you, sir,” I replied.

  “God make you happy.”

  “I wish the very same to you, sir.”

  Standish said, “I have chosen you to carry this traitor’s head back to Plymouth and accompany me when I present it to Governor Bradford.”

  I said, “’Tis an honor, sir.”

  He unwrapped the head. It was covered by fat, white, wriggling maggots. They wriggled on the eyeballs, the lashes, and eyebrows, and in the long, thick strands of greasy hairs dangling from the scalp.

  Standish said, “With God’s help, we shall deliver Wittuwamat’s head to the Governor tomorrow night.

  “Is this your first glimpse of maggots eating putrid human flesh? Aye, I can see it is. Scripture tells us that flesh is as grass. What nonsense! ’Tis food for carrion beetles and maggots.

  “We shall set sail for Plymouth in the shallop on the morrow at dawn. With God’s help, we will arrive there before sunset.”

  For the remainder of the day, as I wandered about the stockade, I carried the knapsack dangling from the staff upon my shoulder. I was followed by a cloud of stinging black flies.

  Standing over Rigdale’s grave, I said, “Thou art well out of it, dear friend. All our days are sorrow, and our travail grief. Our hearts also taketh not rest in the night.”

  After sunset, I bid farewell to Captain Green and thanked him for all his kindness to me. We embraced.

  He said, “I warrant that you and Abigail will soon be betrothed.”

  I said, “I am unworthy of her love.”

  He said, “Let her decide.”

  I said, “I will, and she will say, ‘How miserably you have changed! You are not worthy of my love.’”

  Then Butts came up to us and said, “Good sirs, we have been here eight months. I was to be paid three pounds a year in ready money. How much must Weston pay me?”

  Captain Green said, “Two pounds. God only knows if ready money can be made in this wilderness. Weston believes that profit and religion will someday dance here together.”

  Butts said to me, “Your knapsack, sir, is much beset by flies. Therefore, that must be Wittuwamat’s head therein, Master Wentworth. There’s a good gentleman. Allow me to gaze upon it.”

  Said I, “Get you hence!”

  Henry hung the knapsack from the rafter by the door.

  He said, “And how goes it with you, friend?”

  Said I, “I am attended in the dark by terror and grief.”

  Said he, “I will stay by you all the night.”

  But he fell asleep by eleven of the clock and snored. The flies buzzed about the knapsack. I sat up in bed and said aloud, “I am mad, yea, Bedlam mad.”

  • • •

  At first light, I shaved off my beard. Standish said, “You look much younger, Charles. You have shaved years from your face. Your ragged beard gave you the look of a minor prophet.”

  William White said, “I see that you had the smallpox. My youngest sister, Nell, was stricken with it at ten years of age. It blinded her. Her chief joy is hearing. She says, ‘Song birds sound not so sweet to me as the children’s laughter I sometimes hear beyond the fence whilst sitting in our little vegetable garden.’”

  We set sail in the shallop at about six of the clock in the morning. The wind being fair from the northwest, we rowed out of the Bay and raised the mainsail. When the wind rose, we hoisted the staysail.

  Of the eleven men aboard, I was the only one who knew nothing of sailing upon the sea in an open, six-and-twenty-foot boat. The sea was passably calm, but I was still queasy. I sat on the bench after the mast, with my knapsack between my legs, and my bundle of clothes, &c., upon my lap.

  Everyone knew my knapsack contained Wittuwamat’s head and that I had hacked it from his corpse with Henry’s cutlass. He passed his sword from hand to hand. Its bloodstained blade was much admired. The men questioned me and George Soule about the killing of Wittuwamat.

  Soule said, “I will tell my story in Plymouth to Governor Bradford, who shall surely reward me for shooting Wittuwamat in the bowels. Wentworth here beheaded the corpse.”

  I said, “I will not speak of it.”

  The flies had followed the knapsack out to sea. They buzzed between my legs. I waved some away and was stung twice more, on the back of each hand.

  William White was at the tiller. He steered us south, following the shore. I caught a glimpse of the Swan under full sail. She was about two leagues away, beyond the bay, to the northeast. My little verse came back to me:

  Charles and Abigail

  Set sail.

  And Charles loved Abigail.

  One night,

  By the bluish light

  Of the full moon,

  He said, “I love thee Abigail.

  But what doth it avail me?”

  We made land at Plymouth about four of the clock. I gazed with apathy at the broad sand bank, directly before the town, the small island on the north side of the Bay, the town itself upon the slope of the hill that stretched east toward the shore. Then I saw upon the hill a large square house with a flat roof, mounted with six pieces of artillery. It was the new blockhouse. Wittuwamat’s putrefying head would doubtless be displayed atop its flagstaff. Before the governor’s large, new clapboard house, on the cross street, was a square stockade in which four more artillery pieces were mounted, so as to command the surrounding country.

  Governor Bradford, six musketeers, and many divers others greeted us before his house, which was just below the blockhouse. I spied Abigail amidst the crowd.

  George Soule said to the Governor, “Sir, allow me to tell you how I shot Wittuwamat in the bowels.”

  The Governor said, “Perhaps later, sirrah, perhaps later.”

  With Bradford was an Indian youth
named Mosq (which means a bear). Captain Standish told me that Mosq was ever of a courteous and loving disposition toward us. He was a Succonet; his sachem being Obtakiest, who planned to attack the Plymouth Plantation. Mosq had come to Plymouth two weeks before and had confessed to Captain Standish in broken English that the Massachusetts intended to kill all of us at Wessagusset. He said that he had come to the Captain without fear, saying that his good conscience and love towards Englishmen had emboldened him to do so.

  Standish said, “I then resolved to massacre the Massachusetts.”

  He reached into my knapsack and held up Wittuwamat’s head by its long, greasy hair. I saw Abigail cover her eyes.

  The Governor cried out, “Well done, Captain Standish!”

  Mosq looked mournfully upon the head.

  Standish asked Mosq, “Did that not belong to Wittuwamat?”

  Mosq answered, “Yea.”

  The crowd cheered. Governor Bradford then spake to one of the musketeers, who took the head from Standish and the bloodstained length of linen from me. Then he climbed the hill and entered the blockhouse by its biggest door. The blockhouse was built of thick-sawn planks, stayed with oaken beams. The crowd cheered again when the musketeer emerged from a trap door upon the flat roof. Standing upon a block of wood, he took down the standard of St. George and fixed the bloodstained length of linen in its place. It caught the wind. The crowd cheered once more. The musketeer stuck Wittuwamat’s head atop the flagstaff. Then he descended through the open trap door. Abigail gazed at the putrid head and the bloody banner.

  Five ravens dropped upon the roof and, with their thick, sharp beaks and claws, fought each other for possession of Wittuwamat’s decaying flesh. Two of them pecked at the maggots therein. Another ripped a length of skin from Wittuwamat’s forehead. The fading sunlight turned the ravens’ plumage purple. Then the largest raven of the flock flapped his wings and cawed and chased the other birds away from the roof. He stood upon the crown of the head and preened his feathers with his black beak.

  I made my way through the throng to Abigail.

  When she saw me, she burst into tears. Then she said, “Charles! These are tears of joy. This is the first time in my life I have wept for joy. Now that I think on it, weeping for joy is very strange. What a pity that we cannot kiss in public. Wait! I have it!”

  She kissed the tip of her forefinger and with it caressed my lips that were sorely sunburnt from sailing on the shallop.

  I flinched at the pain, but then said, “Never mind. The pain from your caress gives me pleasure.”

  Abigail said, “Dearest Charles, forgive me. In your absence, I kept your face in my mind the whole time. But I forgot that your left eye is slightly smaller than your right. Allow me to make amends for my forgetfulness.”

  She again kissed the tip of her forefinger but, this time, caressed my left eyelid with it.

  I said, “I am unworthy of your love.”

  “Why?”

  I said, “Because I am damned.”

  “How do you know?”

  Said I, “I enjoyed killing an Indian in a battle and beheading the corpse of another. I was an accomplice to Rigdale’s death. We all were. Wittuwamat gave us the choice: hang Rigdale or be slain.”

  “Who is Wittuwamat?”

  “The sachem of the Massachusetts. He bit his fingernails.”

  “Was it he you killed?”

  “No. I beheaded his corpse.”

  “Is that his rotting head on the flagstaff?”

  “Yes.”

  “Horrible,” she said. “’Tis horrible, but I cannot look away from it. Why is that? I did not think that you were capable of beheading a corpse. You have returned to me a different man. There is now a toughness within thee. But I love thee still. Nay, even more than before!”

  “I am not mine own man anymore. I have been entirely given over to melancholy. All my days are sorrow. I take not rest in the night.”

  Said she, “You must confide in Master Brewster. He helped regenerate me.”

  Said I, “How so?”

  Said she, “Through prayer and suffering. He bade me immerse myself every night for two months in these words of the Fifth Commandment: ‘Honor thy father.’ Afterwards my guilt and remorse for wishing my beloved father dead kept me awake for hours. Sometimes, to relieve my anguish, I summoned up your comely, pitted face. Yes, your pitted face is comely to me. But it painfully reminded me of my beloved father’s countenance. Thus, every night, my thoughts went round and round.

  “Then about five of the clock on the cold afternoon of Friday, the twenty-fifth of November, whilst wiping my snotty nose upon the back of my hand, I was overcome with delight at the loveliness of God. My delight in it was entirely different from anything I had ever experienced. Even my love for you, Charles! I was immediately delivered from guilt and remorse. I became a new person. Do I look different than before?”

  Said I, “Your curls are longer. You are altogether more beautiful in my eyes.”

  She said, “You cannot see the changes wrought in my soul by the Spirit of God. With God’s grace I hope in time to show them to you.”

  Then Standish sought me out and brought me and Abigail back with him to his house, wherein we supped upon a roasted goose.

  He said to Abigail, “Master Wentworth here proved himself a brave soldier. You should be proud of him.”

  I said, “I reveled in each blow that I gave Wittuwamat’s neck with the cutlass. I rejoiced in shooting off the arm of another savage, who bled to death. God forgive me, I have never enjoyed myself more. My satanical pleasure in such things hath blotted out any hope for me of everlasting joy in heaven. I know now that my inborn cruelty destines me to burn in hell.”

  Standish said, “Your delusion that you are damned because you rejoiced in your first battle is common to many godly soldiers. We veterans call such bloodlust ‘wearing the red veil.’ It will pass.”

  Said I, “I think not.”

  Abigail said, “I agree. You must most painfully be reborn in Christ and become an entirely new man. Master Brewster can help thee.”

  I said, “I think not.”

  Abigail said to me, “Do you still have my white kerchief?”

  “’Tis tattered from all my sweaty kisses.”

  She said, “Then take my blue one and wear it about your neck.”

  As I tied its ends together under my chin, I thought of the hangman’s noose that had strangled Rigdale. I remembered that it is called a “collar” in England.

  • • •

  Master Brewster lived in a new, large house on the corner of the Street and the Highway, across from Governor Bradford. I resumed lodging with the Brewster family. Every morning, I went to work for Master Brewster, pulling weeds in his six acres of corn, which lay on the south side of the brook to the baywards. The adjacent single acre to the west had been recently granted to Stephen Deane, one of the lusty young men who had arrived at Plymouth on the Fortune.

  Deane said, “I come from Southwark, where I was a gunsmith and a worker in metals.”

  Said I, “Southwark, you say? My best friend’s wife and daughter are buried in St. Olave’s churchyard.”

  Said he, “’Tis where my parents lie! St. Olave was where I was baptized and took communion. Well, well. I must talk with your friend. Pray tell me his name.”

  Said I, “Zachariah Rigdale. But alas, he hath been dead these last ten days.”

  Said he, “Is he not the man who was hanged by his fellow Englishmen at Wessagusset?”

  “The same,” said I.

  “How could his fellow Englishmen do such a thing?”

  “Cowardice.” said I. “The sachem of the savages named Wittuwamat gave us a choice. Either hang Rigdale or be slain. We hanged him.”

  “Never mind! Remember what Scripture says, ‘’Tis every man fo
r himself.’”

  Said I, “Where is that writ in Scripture?”

  Said he, “If it is not, it should be!”

  Said I, “Wittuwamat was truly diabolical. Only a devilish mind would have thought to make us all accomplices to his crime. Just think what a subtle, evil idea that was!”

  Said he, “All them savages are evil. They worship the devil.”

  Governor Bradford told me that Stephen Deane was one of the leaders of the men who, four months before, had implored him to allow them to work for themselves, rather than the company of Merchant Adventurers. They would continue to divide all the assets equally, and each man would pay to the Plantation a yearly tax of Indian corn. The Governor consulted with his assistant, Isaac Allerton, and Master Brewster. They agreed to allow each man to work for himself and pay a tax to the Plantation’s common store of two bushels of corn a year. Taxes could not be paid in ready money. Every man was assigned a plot of land, the extent depending upon the size of the man’s family. The land could not be inherited.

  The Governor said to me, “The young men that were most able and fit for labor and service did complain that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without any recompense. Permitting each man to work for himself makes all hands very industrious. Much more corn was planted this spring than ever.”

  Brewster said, “Alas, my dream of creating an apostolic community of equals in New England was not to be. I should have known. We are all fallen. Even the Elect amongst us are fallen. We look only to enrich ourselves. You have seen my big house. My fellow Saints built it for me and my family. I accepted it without demur. I who once dreamed of rebuilding an antique Christian commonwealth in New Plymouth.”

  Said I, “Abigail tells me that she hath been regenerated.”