The Sea Hath Spoken

by Stephen Lewis

  “I do recall,” she replied in a tone she hoped indicated that choosing to continue would be strictly his choice. He nodded his understanding.

  “He was an angry boy, and now, as a young man, he seems to have fallen in love with a dangerous woman. That is an explosive combination.”

  “You credit the possibility that Ninigret might be implicated, then?” she asked.

  “I cannot deny it.”

  “But you would not want to see an innocent man hang, would you?”

  “No.”

  “I thought not. Even to clear one of your people.”

  “Even so,” he replied. “So it appears that we must find the truth. And I think I know where to pursue it.”

  “Jane?”

  “She is the link that holds all together,” Massaquoit said.

  “It will not be long before the governor seeks her,” Catherine said.

  “Then I must be first,” Massaquoit replied.

  * * * *

  Massaquoit paused as he approached his wigwam. Although it looked just as he had left it some hours before, he sensed a difference. Instead of proceeding directly to the flap that covered the wigwam’s entrance, he walked around its outside, letting his foot touch the ground so gently that his step was soundless. His wigwam had its summer sheathing of reed matting through which he would be able to discern the outline of an intruder if there were any light from inside, but it was dark. As he reached the back of the wigwam, opposite the entrance, he thought he could detect a slight bulge in the line of the reed sheathing. He studied it, but he could not be certain whether it moved or not, or whether his eyes were being deceived by the shadow of a branch from the maple that overhung the wigwam.

  He kicked at the bulge and his foot thudded against something solid. He trotted back to the opening of his wigwam and waited. He heard movement inside, and then a hand emerged in a tentative movement. Massaquoit seized the hand and pulled. He met a moment’s resistance, and then a body tumbled out at his feet. He let go of the hand as he recognized the face.

  “I did not mean to startle you,” Ninigret said, “but I did not think it wise to wait for you outside.”

  “In that you are correct. Now that I have pulled you out of my house, let us both go back into it.”

  They crawled back through the flap and squatted on across from each other, with the stones of Massaquoit’s fire circle between them.

  “I have no food to offer you,” Massaquoit said.

  “Do not concern yourself. ”

  “You are under a cloud of suspicion for murdering the English. They will come for you.”

  Ninigret pulled his lips back into an ugly sneer.

  “That is not all they will find if they come to Niantic. We have the English priest. Rawandag and some young braves took him as he hunted. As you said, a time would come.”

  “And the woman?”

  “She is with me. She says she wants the English priest to marry us. But Rawandag says the English priest must be tortured for what he did to Minnehaha.”

  “And what do you think?”

  Ninigret’s expression softened, and Massaquoit realized the young man loved Jane at least as much as he hated Jonathan.

  “I think I will live with this woman.”

  “And the priest?”

  “I want to see terror in his eyes.”

  “If you kill him, the English will want payment ten times over in your blood.”

  Ninigret considered, and his expression turned grave.

  “I am sure you know about their revenge,” he said in a low voice.

  “Yes,” Massaquoit replied.

  They sat in silence for a while.

  “I must return. My mother sits with Jane. They do not understand each other.”

  “Your mother,” Massaquoit repeated.

  “What?” Ninigret asked, and Massaquoit realized that he was thinking about Willeweenaw in a way that had nothing to do with her son sitting in front of him.

  “I was just remembering,” Massaquoit said, “a long time ago.”

  “Yes, when I was a boy.”

  Massaquoit was thankful that Ninigret’s self-absorption prevented him from reading Massaquoit’s mind concerning Willeweenaw.

  “I will follow after you later tonight. Maybe I can talk to Rawandag.”

  “Yes,” Ninigret replied. “That would be good. I see you standing in the middle between my brother who has given himself to the English and their god, and Rawandag who wants only to return to a time that is gone.”

  Ninigret reached across and seized Massaquoit’s arms in a firm grasp.

  “I have no father,” he said, and then he dropped his hand and made his way to the entrance.

  After Ninigret left, Massaquoit was struck by the force of a thought that he now realized he had been attempting to repress. There was another reason to be anxious about what he might find in Niantic. Ninigret’s passing reference to his mother now brought back the memory of Willeweenaw, not as he had last seen her, but in the most irrational way, as she had been when they were both young in the house of Uncas, the Mohegan sachem, and then again in the forest not far from Niantic when she told him about her husband who had come back only in body, not mind, from the slaughter at Mystic. He remembered her determination to retain her hold on Ninigret, her angry son, and how he had seen in her eyes the realization that her efforts would be futile.

  And in those eyes, passionate and deep, he had also felt the pang of memory of his own wife, killed at Mystic along with his own son. Willeweenaw and he, he understood, shared the pain and disappointments of their people, having both of them lost spouses and children, either in fact or effect. Perhaps that is why he felt such a strong emotion as he contemplated seeing her again.

  Or perhaps he was remembering how he felt when he was young, and his blood stirred in the presence of a beautiful woman as Ninigret so clearly evidenced now.

  Chapter Ten

  Massaquoit heard the drums and the singing from a half a mile away, and he shook his head at Ninigret’s brazen nerve. If the English were coming to take Jane, the music of the feast would draw their clumsy steps right to the village. He followed the path around the rise before the village, and paused at the beginning of the field. A scrawny dog came out of the shadows and offered bared teeth and a low growl. He took one quick step toward it and waved his arms, and the dog disappeared back into the shadows. He saw the square shape of the meetinghouse rising above the cones of the wigwams. He passed the outermost wigwam and saw smoke rising from a two fires in a cleared space before the meetinghouse. The drummers were squatting by the fires and dancers whirled in a circle about them. Over each fire on a spit was the headless and legless carcass of a roasting deer. A woman stood in the shadows behind the dancers and near a wigwam, her arms clasped in front of her chest, and he knew it must be Willeweenaw.

  He walked to the edge of the first circle of dancers, all men, and watched as they passed before him, sometimes whirling, sometimes hopping first on one foot and then the other. Now that he was close enough to see them in the light he could observe the paint on their bodies, bright shades of red and blue and green in fanciful shapes on the bare chests and faces. He looked past them to the next circle of dancers, all women, and they too wore paint on their faces, and their tunics were elaborately decorated with brightly colored beads. The two circles danced as though the other was not there. Massaquoit studied all the faces in both circles as they presented themselves to him, and he saw neither Ninigret nor Jane.

  He approached Willeweenaw and took note of the wigwam next to which she stood as still as a tree on a calm night. The wigwam looked newly constructed of freshly cut saplings. It was covered by reeds still green and only loosely woven together. He saw that Willeweenaw’s face was not painted, nor had she decorated her tunic with ceremonial beads. She flicked her eyes at him as he approached and then with the slightest motion turned his attention to the wigwam.

  “They are inside. They wait
for you,” she said.

  “You do not approve,” Massaquoit said.

  She shrugged.

  “Ninigret, as you know, as not heeded my advice since that day when his father came back from the war with eyes that no longer focused, and a heart turned to stone. Why should he listen to me now?”

  “Tonight, he said to me that he has no father.”

  “Yes, but he could also have said he has no mother.”

  “And his brother, who now speaks the words of the English god?”

  Willeweenaw’s face softened in sorrow.

  “Peter tries only to convert him. And me. When he saw that Ninigret was set on living with this English woman, all he could suggests is that he baptize both of them, and then marry them the English way. Ninigret listened with a face like stone and then he sent Peter away. He said he would marry this woman in our traditional way.”

  The drumming had stopped, and Massaquoit turned back toward the dancers. They stood still, their chests heaving. A moment later, two men detached themselves from the circle and walked toward Massaquoit and Willeweenaw. As they came abreast, they stared hard at Massaquoit, and then continued past the wigwam and into the shadows behind it. Massaquoit watched their backs until he could no longer see them.

  “Wait, and you will understand,” Willeweenaw said.

  Two different men emerged from the shadows and walked toward the dancing circles. They were not sweating nor breathing hard. They took their places among the other men, and the drumming resumed.

  “The English priest?” Massaquoit asked.

  “There must come a time when we push back,” she said.

  “Now you sound like Ninigret.”

  Her eyes flashed.

  “Is that so strange?”

  “Not at all,” he replied, and took a step toward the wigwam. “But I am expected.”

  “Rawandag is inside. He plays the role of father to my son. What will you say to him?”

  “That the English priest must not be killed.”

  “And to my son?”

  “What he surely knows, that the English will be coming after them, perhaps as early as tomorrow.”

  “We heard about the dead English, this woman’s brother.”

  “Ninigret and she are suspected.”

  “Of course,” she said, and then her face darkened. “It may be that my son has killed an English. If he did, I will not blame him.” She took a step toward Massaquoit so that he could feel her breath on his cheek. “Help him if you can. I do not want to lose him.”

  He put his arm around her, expecting her to pull back, but she did not. Instead, for a few moments she pressed her head against his chest, and then looked up.

  “Please,” she said. She put her hands on his chest and pushed him away. “There is not much time, and maybe he will trust you.”

  Massaquoit walked the few steps that took him to the new wigwam. It had an uncovered opening for an entrance, and its reed sheathing was so loose that it admitted the light of the moon with little interruption. He stooped and entered. The moonlight took the edge from the darkness inside, and in its pale glow he could see two figures sitting together on one side, and a third a few feet away on the other. He waited for his eyes to adjust to the semi-darkness. When they did, he could make out the white line of Ninigret’s smile. Jane’s face, however, remained obscured by the darkness. The white hair of the other figure also was visible, and Massaquoit concluded that the man below the hair must be Rawandag, an elder of the family that included both Ninigret and the girl Jonathan Peters had attempted to rape. The old man held a pipe in his left hand. His right arm hung limp at his side. He sucked in the smoke, held it in his mouth for a few seconds, and then expelled it. He held out the pipe to Massaquoit. Massaquoit took it from him and inhaled. It had been a long time since last he had been offered a ceremonial smoke, and he savored the pungent taste. He let the smoke out of his mouth slowly and waited for its acrid scent to reach his nostrils. He handed the pipe back to Rawandag, who in turn, gave it to Ninigret. Ninigret took a puff and passed the pipe toward the old man. Jane intercepted it and held it in front of her mouth. Ninigret started to reach for the pipe, but Jane stopped him with a quick shake of her head and a look that seemed to convey some secret understanding between them.

  “I have wanted to try this tobacco,” she said. “To see if I can taste your god, as I think mine has abandoned me.”

  “I do not think you will find him in the smoke,” Massaquoit said.

  “But still I will try.” She took a deep puff, and coughed until the tears came to her eyes. She tried again, and this time held the smoke in her mouth. She the let it out from between lips that were only slightly open. She gave the pipe to the old man.

  “I am Rawandag,” he said. He put the pipe down, and then used his good left hand to lift up his useless right. “And this is a present I received from the English in the war that you, Massaquoit, know well.” He picked up the pipe and puffed on it again before handing it back to Massaquoit. “Smoke and remember what happened to you and your family.”

  As if on cue, a man’s scream drifted into the wigwam from somewhere in back of it. Massaquoit began to get up, but Rawandag reached across to grab hold of his arm.

  “You do not intend to interfere, do you?” Rawandag asked.

  Massaquoit did not answer immediately. Instead, he focused on the hard anger in the old man’s eyes, and it stirred a sympathetic emotion in his own heart. He saw again, with startling clarity, the white skin of Jonathan’s buttocks above the dark and flailing legs of the young girl, the terror, mixed with contempt in her expression as she struggled to free herself. The incident epitomized the fifty year history of his people’s dealings with the English. And yet, across from him, sat Ninigret, a young man at least as angry as the old man, about to join his own dark skin to the fair complexioned woman at his side. From some perspectives, perhaps, their union might appear to be a reconciliation between the two cultures. Massaquoit, however, did not think so, for there was something unremittingly selfish in this woman’s demeanor, and he could only conclude that she was using Ninigret, perhaps to escape the wrath of the English. All of this flashed through his mind before he responded, but he chose to answer with an understatement bordering on duplicity. Later, he would chasten himself, when recalling this comment, that he unwittingly permitted himself to sound more like Wequashcook than the proud and forthright sachem he, himself, used to be. It was small solace at that time of bitter reflection that he could charge the English with creating a situation in which his character yielded to the pressure of steering between two peoples who seemed intent on crashing with violence into each other.

  “I am a guest here,” he simply replied. He looked across at Ninigret. “I have come to wish this young man a long and happy life with the woman he has chosen.”

  “That is good,” Ninigret said. “Soon we will join the dancers, and then we will eat.”

  “We did not plan to have this wedding feast this evening,” Rawandag said. “When Ninigret arrived here with his woman, we had already begun to prepare the English priest for his ordeal.” He took another puff of the pipe, and then handed it to Massaquoit. “The English priest thought he could hunt without fear, as though we were no longer men. When we captured him, he tried to preach to us out of his book that has the words of his god written in it. He did not believe we would hold him accountable for his actions. But our honor demands that we exact vengeance on him for his attack on Minnehaha. You saw that with your own eyes, and we are grateful for what you did in stopping his attack on her. But the English priest is here, and these young people are like cheese to the English rats who will seek them, and when they arrive in Niantic they will also find their priest. It is a complicated situation.”

  Massaquoit envisioned his people’s bodies strewn about, women and children along with the men trying to prove they were still men. He inhaled on the pipe and he found a way to avert the slaughter he feared.

&nbs
p; “You will need something to trade with, when the English come,” he said.

  “We have muskets, now,” Ninigret said, “as well as our bows.”

  “They have more, and they are more,” Massaquoit replied.

  “We will give them their priest then,” Rawandag said, “in pieces.”

  “Yes,” Massaquoit replied with a harsh smile, “pieces of the English priest’s flesh that can be fed to the dogs. And then?”

  “We will be gone,” Jane said. “Leaving only the dogs and the priest’s bones.”

  Massaquoit stared hard at this woman, and then he turned to Rawandag.

  “Do you imagine that the English will go home after arriving here to find the remains of one of their own, and not just any one, but their holy man?”

  “Then we can stay to greet them,” Ninigret offered, and this time in voice and expression he seemed more like the surly boy Massaquoit had met years before.

  Rawandag lifted his limp arm.

  “I have lost one arm to the English. I think that is enough. But perhaps the English priest, too, should lose part of himself.”

  Massaquoit felt a moment of relief. Perhaps the old man would abandon his anger long enough to accept a reasonable compromise. He placed the pipe down between them, as a gesture of understanding.

  “Not too big a piece,” he said.

  “But a remembrance,” Rawandag said.

  “Maybe that part of him that he wanted to use on my cousin,” Ninigret said. “That would be right.”

  “But not wise,” Massaquoit said, and Rawandag picked up the pipe. He took a deep puff.

  “No,” he said. “Not wise at all.”

  In the background all this time had been the drums, the singing, and the shuffling of feet in the dirt. Now, there was silence. Rawandag stood up.

  “We had better see to the priest,” he said, “while there is still some of him left.”

  From outside the wigwam came a yipping sound like the howl of dogs. Rising above it, in clear English accents, was a voice that alternated between threats and pleas, and then finally settled on whimpers. Massaquoit led the way out of the wigwam. Willeweenaw still stood where Massaquoit had last seen her, with her arms clasped, a few feet away from the wigwam. Coming from the darkness behind the wigwam were several men carrying torches. Between them, naked and with his hands tied in front of him, staggered Jonathan. One man marched in front holding Jonathan’s huge Bible up over his head. Jonathan stopped every step or two until one or the other of the men encouraged him forward with a touch of a torch to the back of his legs, buttocks, or back. He would lurch forward, his eyes wide and staring, and saliva dripping from his mouth, which was hidden behind lips puffed to twice their size. His eyes were almost closed, and his nose was crusted with dried blood. He walked gingerly on his toes, and Massaquoit recognized, even without seeing them, that the soles of his feet must have been beaten until they swelled into massive bruises. The little procession paused in front of Massaquoit and Rawandag. Massaquoit could see the line of dried urine running down Jonathan’s right leg from inside of his thigh to the top of his foot. Jonathan looked at Massaquoit the way a drowning man might stare at somebody holding a rope just out of his reach. His eyes beseeched, and Massaquoit offered an almost invisible nod. One of the warriors brought his torch down onto Jonathan’s back and held it there until the minister shuffled forward. He left behind a pungent smell of singed flesh.