Ghost Hawk

by Susan Cooper

  John hesitated. But he had fulfilled his errand and the afternoon was not over yet; he had some time to himself, which was very rare. So he followed the hawk. He walked down into the marsh, careful to tread on hummocks of grass and to hop over the small creeks without filling his shoes with water. Gradually he made his way toward the higher ground of the island, where tall trees rose, cherry and maple, hickory and oak. Somewhere in those trees the red-tailed hawk might be perched high on a branch, watching for small birds or scurrying voles.

  Over to his right, hidden behind the mainland trees beyond the marsh, the sun went down. The light was golden now over the marsh. The sky was still blue.

  John stepped onto the firm grass of the island, where the trees gradually rose, and ahead of him, in a shadowy gap between two trees, he saw me.

  SIX

  John caught his breath, and stood very still. At first he was merely surprised, at the sudden sight of an Indian where he was expecting nobody. But then he saw the scar on my face that the wolf had left, the scar that once he had gently touched, and he stared in fear and disbelief.

  Very slowly, he put his basket on the ground. He came closer, step by slow step, blue eyes wide just as when he was a little boy.

  There I was, looking at him, standing still, bare-chested, undamaged, in breechclout and leggings. But, he now saw, I was not wholly substantial; through me, he could faintly see the trees of the island.

  He said, “Hawk?”

  “John Wakeley,” I said. “I greet you. You are older. But I think you are the same.”

  “You’re a ghost,” John said. His voice was tight with fear.

  “ ‘Ghost’ is just a word. I am Little Hawk. The Great Spirit keeps me here, though he has not told me why.”

  His mind drove out fear as it traveled into the awful memory of our last moment together.

  He said, “It was terrible. You came to help, and . . . It was terrible. I have nightmares still.”

  “I know,” I said.

  John said, “If I hadn’t said your name . . . It was my fault you stayed, it was my fault you were killed.”

  “No,” I said.

  Suddenly he was afraid again. “They say ghosts are the work of the Devil. There are fearsome punishments for those who tell of visions. They would say you are an evil spirit.”

  “Do you think I am?”

  “No,” he said. “You tried to save my father. You are my friend.”

  I said, “And you have saved my tomahawk.”

  “I had to. I had to. Is that why you’re here?”

  There was a sudden rising chorus of squawks from the trees above us, first one and then others joining it, and after a moment the red-tailed hawk flapped silently up into the sky, pursued by a gaggle of shouting crows.

  I didn’t know the answer to his question.

  I said, “All I know is that something holds me here. To watch, to listen. Perhaps for you I am Manitou.”

  “Manitou?” he said, puzzled.

  One day I would explain that to him, but not now.

  “The tomahawk is full of memories,” I said. “They are very powerful. If you guard it, take care.”

  John said, “There are some who turn lies into memories.”

  He was thinking of Kelly, of course, and Daniel Smith.

  “Guard the truth, John Wakeley,” I said to him. “Go home to your kind mistress, take her the sassafras roots. Work to become a craftsman. Honor my people, for my sake. If ever you need, you can find me on this island.”

  “Don’t go!” he said.

  “Come at this part of the day,” I said. “Or at dawn.”

  The daylight was fading. All at once our time was over, and he could no longer see me.

  He ran forward, reaching out his hand, but he could see only the trees.

  “Hawk?” he said. “Hawk!”

  For a moment he looked like the little boy again, but this time desolate, pleading.

  Then he grabbed up his basket and hastened away over the salt marsh before darkness swallowed it up, before anyone could guess that he had found anything more than a few roots of a sassafras tree.

  * * *

  Perhaps that meeting changed his life. Perhaps, if he hadn’t seen me, he would have been able to bury the horror of seeing me die, and would have merged into his community as a hardworking, God-fearing Puritan in the mold of William Medlycott. Perhaps I would have faded into the background of his memory as a benevolent but heathen savage, which seemed to be the best judgment from an Englishman that any Indian could hope for, even our father Yellow Feather.

  Perhaps John would have become a man like all the rest, if he hadn’t seen me again. Perhaps. But he didn’t.

  For a long time after that meeting he was thoughtful and quiet—so quiet that Mistress Medlycott wondered if he was sickening for some ailment, and made him drink dandelion tea. But he worked hard, harder than ever. He filled all his hours with working, pulling weeds out of the garden if he could find nothing else to do in the workshop. He no longer made special times to play with the younger children or to race with Thomas, and they were all very disappointed in him.

  He thought and thought about me. He tried to tell himself that he had not seen a ghost, but he knew that he had. In his world, it was a terrible dangerous secret. Though he longed to see me again, he knew he couldn’t come near the island unless he was utterly certain nobody could be nearby.

  Winter came. Twice John had written to his mother, and she to him. Now a letter came again, delivered by a messenger bringing letters from Plymouth for Master Medlycott, and in it John’s mother told him she would be having a baby in the spring. At the bottom of the page was a little note from Mercy, very carefully written. It said, “Dearest Brother, I send you repeckts and I hop you are wel. We miss you. Your sister Mercy.”

  At first John found tears in his eyes. Then he thought, Well, at least he couldn’t stop her from learning her letters. Then he wondered what Mercy would have said if she had been free to tell him what their life was like. And when he said his prayers before going to bed that night, as he had done all his life, he added a long particular prayer asking his God to look after his mother.

  He rarely had a chance to speak to Huldah Bates, but they exchanged smiles at the meetinghouse on Sundays. The congregation still gathered for food and fellowship between the morning and afternoon sermons, but people did not meet outdoors as the weather grew colder, and Huldah was always out of sight somewhere looking after the youngest Kelly children. There were more people, too, spreading not just from Plymouth but from the bigger Massachusetts Bay settlement to the north, now called Boston.

  “On the Sabbath next week, brothers and sisters,” said the minister one Sunday, “we shall have an exchange of preachers, if the Lord spare us a snowstorm. I shall preach at our mother church in Plymouth, and this congregation will have the privilege of hearing the learned Plymouth pastor, Roger Williams.”

  There was a murmur from the congregation, though John couldn’t tell whether it was pleasure or disapproval.

  “I don’t think my father likes Master Williams,” Thomas said as they trudged home. His parents and the smaller children had gone ahead by cart. “He says he is too much of a Separatist and that he questions the authority of our magistrates.”

  “My parents went to live in Holland because they were Separatists,” John said. “A place called Leyden. I was born there.”

  “You never told me that,” said Thomas. “Holland! Can you speak Dutch?”

  “No. We left when I was four.”

  “Are Separatists very different from us?”

  “I don’t think so,” John said. “Didn’t everyone leave England so they could worship God in their own way, separate from the Church of England?”

  Thomas had lost his fleeting interest in religion. “I’ll race you to that big pine tree,” he said.

  “We can’t—it’s the Sabbath.”

  “Nobody can see, they’re all ahead of us.
And Ezra stayed to talk to his cousin.”

  So they raced, and Thomas won.

  By the time they reached home, this cold winter day, their faces were no longer hot and nobody could tell they had been running. In any case, nobody even noticed them, since there was a greater distraction in the yard. Three of my people were there, tall, erect men, each with a bundle at his feet.

  Thomas stopped, startled. “Indians!” he said.

  I knew one of them: he was Yellow Bear, an elder of the village by the river. He was older than when I knew him, of course, and he was wearing an Englishman’s cloth jacket over his deerskin leggings. He was trying to talk to Master Medlycott, who had been helping his wife and children out of the cart.

  “No!” said Master Medlycott to Yellow Bear, shaking his head and his tall dark hat. “No! Not today!”

  “A trade,” said Yellow Bear in English. “A good trade.”

  He made a sign to one of the other men, who were younger and dressed normally, and the young man flipped open his bundle and displayed a soft, beautifully finished deerskin blanket.

  “Good trade,” said Yellow Bear, nodding his head firmly. At council meetings he had been one of the most eloquent, persuasive men in our community; it was heartbreaking to see him reduced to a few fumbling words in an unfamiliar language.

  “This is the Sabbath! We do not trade on the Sabbath!” Master Medlycott said, loudly, clearly, slowly, as if he were talking to someone deaf or stupid. “No trade!”

  The second young man opened his bundle as well, and revealed two smaller child-size blankets, even more beautiful; they were fawn skins, edged with rabbit fur. He thrust them out toward Mistress Medlycott, smiling hopefully.

  Mistress Medlycott smiled back, but shook her head and held up her hands. “No,” she said.

  “Sunday!” boomed Master Medlycott. “It is Sun-day! The day of the Lord! No trading!”

  Ezra came up behind Yellow Bear; he had just arrived home, catching us up. To the astonishment of everybody in the yard, he said to Yellow Bear in our language, “No trade today.”

  He was speaking Massachusett, and very badly, but Yellow Bear could understand him. He turned to look at Ezra gratefully.

  “This man has traded with the boys before, and these are exceptional skins,” he said to Ezra. “Why is he being so unfriendly?”

  But he was wasting his time. Ezra too had only a few words of the other’s language, and had no idea what Yellow Bear was saying. Fortunately, though, he did have the vital word “day.”

  “Bad day,” he said in Massachusett, staring into Yellow Bear’s face as if his eyes could communicate. “Bad day. Go. Come good day.”

  Yellow Bear understood the words, but not of course the reason for them. He shook his head, disappointed. “Very well,” he said. He picked up the bundle at his own feet.

  “Let us go,” he said to the two young men. “These people are very superstitious—it’s clearly an unlucky day for trading, for some reason. Their spiritual beliefs are very strange.”

  John watched and listened, longing to know what he was saying.

  The young men folded their skins. Yellow Bear inclined his head formally to Master Medlycott, Mistress Medlycott, to Ezra, John, and Thomas, and turned away, and the three figures walked silently toward the trees and were gone.

  “Pah!” said Master Medlycott in exasperation. “These ignorant savages, they have no respect for the Lord’s holy Sabbath! What can you do with them?”

  “Ezra!” Thomas burst out. “Where did you learn their language?”

  “There was an Indian came to services at the meetinghouse when I was in Boston,” Ezra said. “I was instructed to teach him English, so I picked up some of his words. But only a few.”

  “Enough to be helpful today,” said Mistress Medlycott quietly. “We thank you, Ezra.”

  “It is a barbarous tongue,” said Master Medlycott. His voice was cold.

  “It is indeed,” Ezra said. “I will take the horses in.”

  John watched, eyes bright, and I knew I should see him soon again. In his mind I could hear a clear excited determination to come back to my island, and ask me to teach him how to speak the barbarous tongue.

  SEVEN

  A week went by, with the cooperage so busy that John had no chance to do anything but work, eat, and sleep. Then Roger Williams burst into his life, on the back of a horse.

  It was Sunday again, a crisp day with the sun glinting on a thin overnight snowfall that had turned the whole village white. Everyone was arriving at the meetinghouse. William Medlycott greeted Master Kelly, who was bustling about outside the door welcoming people and looking important. John kept out of his way, while peering unsuccessfully for a glimpse of Huldah.

  “He should have been here an hour since!” Master Kelly was complaining.

  “I hope he has come to no harm,” said Master Medlycott. “Wouldst like me to send after him?”

  But then a horse came cantering up from the snow-streaked road, ridden by a young man in a long black coat; he jumped off in a hurry. “Master Kelly!” he cried. “Master Medlycott! Lord be praised, I am not too late!” He offered no explanation, but beamed round at them all; he had a bright, open face and was probably the only man in sight without a beard.

  “Welcome, Master Williams,” said William Medlycott. “My boy will take your horse.”

  He reached out his big hand, took the horse’s rein, and handed it to John, who was delighted; he was used to horses now, and this was a handsome one.

  “Tie him with the others,” said Master Medlycott, and turned back to Roger Williams. But Williams had his keen eyes on John.

  “Thank you, my boy,” he said. “What’s thy name?”

  “John Wakeley, sir.”

  “Well, John, tha must lead me to my horse at the end of the day, and I hope our Lord will keep me from sending thee to sleep.”

  “Yes, sir—no, sir,” said John, entranced with this unusual preacher, and he led the horse away, rubbed the sweat from it with a handful of hay, let it drink at the horse trough, and tied it with the other patient Sabbath steeds. He slipped into the meetinghouse just in time to hear Roger Williams begin.

  The sermon was as unusual as the speaker. He told them his life story. He said that he had been born, raised, and ordained as a minister in the Church of England—which meant, I now saw, the Christian religion as it was practiced in the land from which all John’s people came. Their worship was overseen not only by ministers but by bishops over those, and then archbishops, and at the head of all, the country’s king. They read and prayed from the book they called their Holy Bible, and from a book of prayers, and no other way of worship was allowed.

  But, said Roger Williams, he had come to feel that this system was too severe, and that men should be allowed to worship their God in whatever way they felt best. So he and his young wife—like all here in this room, he said to them—had crossed the great ocean to find a place where they would be free. He described his fifty-six days at sea, and John felt they sounded far nastier than the voyage he and his family took when he was four years old—though he could remember little of that except tossing about in a dark enclosed space full of bad smells.

  “Yet though we be in the Promised Land,” said Roger Williams, “our brothers and sisters in Boston have failed to take up that promise, and theirs is an unseparated church still in communion with the Church of England. We should be separate,” he said firmly, and thumped the lectern in front of him, and there was a rumble of agreement in the meetinghouse.

  “Aye,” said a large man next to John, loudly, and his wife gave him a quick nervous glance.

  “Thus I declined the offer to become pastor in the Boston church on my arrival,” said Roger Williams, “and said further that I believed the people in this new land should have soul liberty. By this, I mean that religious opinion is one thing and civil authority is another, and the two should be kept apart. Idolatry and false worship are wrong, and so are
blasphemy and the breaking of the Sabbath—but they should not be punished by order of a magistrate. The authority of our religious belief belongs not to any magistrate, but to the Lord Jesus Christ.”

  “Aye,” said the man next to John again, and a few others too. But when John glanced at Ezra, he saw that he was frowning.

  “As you may know,” said Roger Williams, “the good people of Salem, sharing my beliefs, asked me to come and minister to them, but certain of the elders in the Boston church petitioned the governor against my settling there. And then”—he paused, and his face lit up with a smile—“to my great fortune, I was invited instead to the Plymouth colony, whose elders would brook no rule from the governor, feeling like me that church authority is separate. So here my dear wife Mary and I live henceforth amongst you all, and I rejoice to be preaching today in this church of the colony for the first time.”

  And he went on for a long time with quotations and stories from the Bible, as an encouragement to all these people to live a good life and please their God, so that when they died they might go to Heaven. Before too long, however, he was back to giving them his own opinions on freedom of religion, which seemed to John very different from anything he had heard at the cooperage. He was astonished. Roger Williams didn’t even refer to Indians as heathens.

  “Brothers and sisters,” he said, “we are all the children of God. We are all born with a chance for redemption, in the eyes of the Lord. Let us never forget the cruel divisions that befell our Christian forefathers, in the land from which we all came. The bloody tortures, the men and women burned alive for heresy—and still, the persecution of all freethinkers by the Church of England of today.”

  He spread his hands to them in appeal.

  “Brothers and sisters, let us not follow in their footsteps. Let us not persecute the people we find here in this new world! Just as we should pay the Indian for his land, but not steal it, so we should offer him the love and worship of our Lord Jesus Christ, but not force it upon him.”