by Brian Eames
That morning Van had held the red-hot head of an ax to Kitto’s leg, where the shark had torn away his bent foot. Sarah had held Kitto down by sitting on his chest and pinning his arms to his sides. Van had set a stick in Kitto’s mouth to bear down upon to keep from biting his tongue when the pain hit. And had it ever hit. Sarah shivered at the memory.
“Quog quosh,” Ontoquas said and then translated. “We hurry.”
“Is there something wrong? What is it?”
Ontoquas shook her head. “I did not know you wawmauseu.” Ontoquas frowned, wishing her English allowed her to say it the way she could in the language of her own people. “I see you with him today. You are a good mother. Nitka.”
“I do not understand, Ontoquas.”
The Wampanoag girl’s brow knitted. She reached out for Sarah’s forearm and gave her a gentle tug. “You must come.”
“Where?” Sarah bit her lip. She looked over at Kitto. “I do not want to leave.”
“Please. He is not far.”
He?
“Is there someone else on this island? Is there a ship?”
Ontoquas shook her head. “Please come.” Sarah pushed herself slowly to her feet. This native girl was such a puzzle to her. Who was she? How had she come to live alone on this forsaken island? And was she truly alone? Sarah swore that she could sense some other presence, some other life, lurking in the dense jungle. All that day the girl had disappeared for stretches of time, sometimes returning with a freshly killed turtle or a split coconut or a bucket of fresh water, but other times with nothing at all save for a worried look.
From habit Sarah ran her hands along the front of her shift as if to smooth it, but the tattered and sun-bleached material was long past such ministrations. The dress that once covered it had been lost to the sea during the hurricane that nearly killed them all.
“For a moment, then,” Sarah said, and followed the girl out of the lean-to.
It was a primitive domed structure, made by Ontoquas’s own hands from woven tree limbs skillfully tied together with reeds, and broad palm leaves covering the frame and providing protection from the rains. Van slept on a pallet of palm leaves at one end of the dwelling, snoring lightly. Sarah stole one last look at Kitto. Were his cheeks truly that pale, or was it the moonlight? He looked peaceful enough. She turned back to the native girl.
Ontoquas led her along a narrow path that carved its way through thick foliage, heading deeper into the island. The way was slow going, with fallen tree trunks and patches where the thick undergrowth forced the path into wide sweeps. After a few hundred yards the ground rose up beneath them in a gentle hill.
How much farther? Sarah wondered. She stopped and looked back in the direction they had come. As she had since they first set foot on the island, Sarah felt now the eerie sense that somewhere in the dark wood there were eyes watching her. She turned back and chided herself. The girl had disappeared around a bend in the rising trail. Sarah was just about to call to her to say she could not go farther on, when Ontoquas came back around the bend. She beckoned to Sarah with urgency. Sarah pursed her lips, but made her way up the last several yards, surprised to see a flash of teeth on the Indian girl when she reached her.
She is smiling! Sarah drew closer. The look on Ontoquas’s face was more than just a smile. The girl’s face beamed with love and joy and pride so radiantly that it brought Sarah to a shocked standstill. The girl pointed toward the ground just a few feet ahead. There lay a tiny clearing in the wood, a circle bordered with stones, fallen logs, and brush shrouded in dark shadow.
Sarah peered toward the circle. In the middle of it, bathed in pale moonlight, slept a baby, a tiny African infant. The baby slept on his back, his arms up by his head. His stomach gently rising and falling with his breath. Sarah gasped when she understood what she was seeing.
“A baby! What is an infant . . . where did . . . is the baby yours?” Ontoquas held a finger to her lips. She knew the baby would be very angry if awoken in the middle of the night.
Now Sarah was even more confused. How did this baby come to be here? The girl was too young to be a mother, and even in the dim light Sarah could see that the two could not be directly related. The girl’s lighter skin, her straight hair—she had to have been a native of the Americas. But the baby was much darker, with a thin layer of curly black hair and a wide nose that flared with each breath.
He was beautiful.
Ontoquas watched the wompey woman step over the barrier she had built to make sure the baby could not escape—not yet necessary since he did not crawl, but she could not bear to leave him in the open woods, even if this island had no animals that would show an interest. Sarah squatted down and scooped the child up expertly. The baby gave a startled jerk and his eyes shot open, but Sarah immediately rose and began to bob him up and down and run the tips of her fingers over his tiny black curls. The child’s eyes drooped, then shut again.
“He is beautiful,” Sarah whispered.
Ontoquas nodded. “Weneikinne.” Sarah stepped about the enclosure with the child in her arms, bouncing gently with each rhythmic step. Ontoquas felt a pang in her stomach as she watched and knew it to be jealousy. Whether the jealousy was aimed at the baby or the woman she did not know. She felt pride, too. Without her, the tiny one would be at the bottom of the sea.
When she looked up again at the woman, she could see her cheeks were wet with tears. Ontoquas said nothing, but let the woman walk her little one around the circle, bobbing as she went. She knew the wompey nitka was thinking of the other child, the son of hers who they had said was somewhere lost out on the sea.
Finally the woman wiped the tears away and stepped close so as not to wake the baby. “He is so young. How have you fed him?”
Ontoquas shrugged. “I chew turtle in teeth,” she said, pantomiming the words. “Then I . . . I kiss it to Bucket.”
“Bucket? That is his name?” Sarah smiled.
“A bucket saved his life. And me.”
Sarah looked back at the shining baby in her arms. “You have done so well, Ontoquas. He looks quite healthy. I would never have thought a girl of your age . . .”
Again silence won out.
“I helped my mother with my netchaw, my . . . brother. Before.”
Before. Sarah nodded, wondering what horrors this child had faced. “Your mother taught you well. But I must know, Ontoquas, how did it come about that you and this baby are here together on this tiny island with no other soul in sight?”
Ontoquas sighed and lowered herself to a fallen log that formed one barrier of the pen. She puzzled, staring hard at the floor of matted palm fronds.
“It is long, our story. And my English . . .”
“Your English is excellent, young lady. Astonishing. You should be proud of it.” Sarah looked back down the rise in the direction they had come. “Kitto is asleep and will stay that way long enough.”
“You do not need to go back?”
“Tell me your story, Ontoquas.”
* * *
CHAPTER 2:
* * *
Slave Ship
JULY 1678, TWO MONTHS EARLIER
“The skin is cold on this one, captain.”
The first mate pinched the woman about the forearm and relayed his message through the kerchief he pressed to his face. The woman in question, dark-skinned yet somehow frighteningly pale about the face still, clutched at a naked baby in her arms with the little strength she had left. The man examining her could scarcely believe she could stand.
“And the eyes, Mr. Preston. Note how sunken they are. Blast!” Captain Lowe grimaced as he made a mark in his precious ledger. He carried the book with him on deck each day, using it to calculate what little profit might be made from this journey gone awry.
“Make your way down the queue, if you please,” Captain Lowe said, “while I decide what is to be done with this one.”
“Aye, aye, Captain.” Mr. Preston moved to the next slave, inspecting a wispy d
ark man for signs of disease.
At the head of the line stood a girl not older than twelve. She stood out by virtue of her skin color and the texture of her hair. Her skin was the color of wet sand, her hair black as India ink and falling straight over her ears and forehead. It had been longer, but the slave trader in Jamaica had taken sheep shears to her locks to ward off the lice.
Unlike her fellow captives, Ontoquas had not hailed from Africa. Her people—the Wampanoag—had lived for thousands of years in lands that would one day be named “Massachusetts” after the people it had been taken from and the language they spoke. But she, too, was a slave.
The line of slaves formed a ragged arch along the outer rail of the ship’s quarterdeck, so Ontoquas could clearly see the diseased woman and the tiny naked boy she cradled in her arms. Ontoquas remembered her little brother, Askooke. He was not much older than this baby when the wompey men came to take them away. She used to help Mother bathe Askooke down at the river. Whatever happened to him?
The woman with the baby sagged, and the baby nearly spilled from her arms. Ontoquas almost leaped from the line to save the infant from being dropped to the deck, but checked herself at the last moment.
They will beat me. They will stop my food as they did to the others.
Ontoquas turned away, a defense she had learned to save herself from witnessing the horrors that this life had shown her.
“This one looks well enough,” Mr. Preston said, moving farther down the line. Ontoquas looked out over the rail and tried to conjure up Askooke’s face in her memory. Somehow her brother’s image had begun to fade.
From behind her came the sound of a heavy burden hitting the deck, followed by startled cries. Ontoquas turned despite herself.
The woman with the baby had fallen, pitching forward onto the quarterdeck’s planks. Her last effort had been to protect the baby, turning so that her body cushioned the infant’s impact. The baby, curled tight, rolled several rotations outward to the middle of the quarterdeck and came to rest on his back. He let out a tiny wail, and Ontoquas felt her heart might break, but none of the white sailors seemed to pay the child any heed.
“Mr. Preston!” Captain Lowe said. “See to that one.” He flicked his pointed chin toward the collapsed woman.
The first mate returned to the sick woman, his kerchief again pressed to his face. The captain watched as the officer pressed his fingers to the woman’s neck, then her wrists. Mr. Preston looked up with arched eyebows.
“She’s dead, Captain!” he said.
“Dead? Are you quite certain?” Captain Lowe ran a finger down a column of numbers in his ledger.
“Aye, Captain. Keeled over right where she stood.” The captain scowled and added another mark to his page.
“Very well, Mr. Preston. Toss the body overboard, if you please.”
“Bowler! Simpson!” Mr. Preston barked toward two sailors nearby at attention. He pointed at the woman. “You heard the captain. Put her overboard.”
Ontoquas knew enough of the white man’s language to know what they had said. Again she tried to turn away, but somehow she could not take her eyes from the pitiable baby lying on deck, kicking his legs out now and crying out for someone to pick him up.
The two sailors stepped forward and took hold of the woman, one by the wrists, the other by the ankles. They moved toward the rail and the line of slaves parted to make room for them. One woman in the line held her hands over her face; a man with wide eyes withdrew in fear, as if he might be the next to go overboard.
The sailors positioned themselves by the rail, one of them pausing to get a better grip. Then they swung the woman’s slack body back and forth several times, as they would a sack of grain. In a moment she was tossed into the air and out of sight.
The men turned around and paused. They were looking at the wriggling baby lying on the quarterdeck, its empty howls being carried off by the wind. Mr. Preston followed their gaze. He, too, seemed puzzled.
“The wee one, Captain?” the first mate said. “What is to be done with that?” He pointed to the child. Captain Lowe, busy with the calculations of reduced profit this latest inconvenience had caused, did not want to be interrupted.
“Just toss it overboard as well,” he said with a wave of his hand, his eyes never leaving the page.
“The baby too, captain? It appears fit enough.”
Captain Lowe jerked his head up in frustration.
“I said overboard! Are you daft, Mr. Preston!” Captain Lowe pointed at the infant with the feathered end of his quill. “The miserable whelp should not have been allowed on this ship in the first place. It must nurse from its mother to stay alive, and now she’s dead.”
“So we throw it overboard?”
“Can you nurse a baby, man? There is nothing more that can be done!” the captain said. “And it probably carries the sickness as well. Get it over before the others fall sick.”
“Aye, aye, Captain.”
Again Ontoquas tried to look elsewhere, and this time she succeeded. In the two years since her enslavement in the Caribbean—so far from her home—she had seen horrors that haunted her dreams: men whipped until they fell and then whipped more, children succumbing to the smoke in burning fields of harvested sugarcane, human beings bought and sold at market in chains, families and loved ones torn apart.
Ontoquas did not want to watch them throw a baby overboard—this baby with the tiny feet it kicked in the air.
Several feet away knelt a boy no older than Ontoquas: a white boy in a plain sailor’s shirt and pants cut at the knee. Captain Lowe had ordered the deck holystoned, and the ship’s boy had been assigned the task. The stone lay in front of him as he sat back on his haunches, breathless, having stopped to watch the unfolding drama. Ontoquas wondered what he thought of it. How could he look on so easily? The stone was large, two hands wide. Beside it a large bucket made from the bottom third of a cut barrel held fresh water.
Ontoquas’s eyes locked on the stone, but she turned when she heard the first mate speak.
“Bowler, Simpson, damn your eyes!” Mr. Preston said. “Do as you’re ordered, men!”
The two sailors who had cast the dead woman over the rail without a care now stood eyeing the infant. They each stole a glance at the other.
“You quite certain, sir?” one of them said, risking a flogging himself.
“Oh, for the love of God!” said Captain Lowe. He tucked beneath one arm his treasured ledger and strode to the middle of the deck where the baby lay. He snatched the boy up by one leg so that the infant dangled upside down.
“Truly, Mr. Preston! You should be embarrassed, sir. Never have I known Englishmen to be so squeamish.” The baby rocked back and forth as the captain strode toward the rail. Its cries grew louder.
Ontoquas spun away, pressing her palms against her ears. The baby’s cries were too terrible! Her eyes fell again on the holystone. She remembered the words of her father, Chief Anawan, the last time she spoke with him.
“We will lose our lives in our fight. It has been foreseen. But if we do not fight, Little Wolf, then we are no longer a people. If we do not fight, then we are already ghosts.”
Ontoquas lowered her hands.
If we do not fight, then we are already ghosts.
Ontoquas stepped from the line of slaves, and with that first step she was a slave no more and never would be again. She took three strides toward the boy who stared at the captain, and kicked him savagely across the cheek with the sole of her foot. He sprawled back in a heap, then turned an incredulous look upon the girl as she hefted the stone.
All eyes were still glued on the captain and the infant dangling from his hand. His back was to Ontoquas.
“Captain! Captain Lowe, sir!” the boy called out.
The captain did not turn as he approached the rail. “Silence, boy, or I shall have you flogged. This is the work of men.” Ontoquas raised the stone high and charged.
“Captain!”
The w
ind was out of the west that morning. It swept steadily across the quarterdeck. Captain Lowe had handed his hat to the first mate before grabbing the infant, and the pressing breeze revealed a pale spot of scalp on his head. He had reached the rail now and drew back his arm to heave the baby to the sea.
“Captain, sir, look out!”
Ontoquas took a last step and drove the holystone for the spot on the captain’s skull with everything she had.
I will fight!
The stone struck without sound. The captain’s head snapped forward. The ledger he held fell, bounced once against the rail, and whirled off in a flutter. The captain slumped into the rail and slid along it until he dropped to the deck in a tangle of loose limbs. Ontoquas plucked the crying baby from the deck and tucked him beneath her arm.
There was an instant of shocked silence, and then the line of slaves broke apart, everyone running.
“All hands!”
The ship exploded into chaos. Voices yelled out in all languages. The captives ran in every direction, some in terror, others in rage. One man hurled himself upon a crouched sailor who had just jumped from the ratlines, and the two struggled for a knife the sailor held. Others charged out blindly and struck at any sailor they could find.
“Get them tied! Get them below!”
Ontoquas ran across the quarterdeck away from the sailors, but Mr. Preston cut her off. She stared at the dark circle of the pistol’s barrel the first mate leveled at her.
Then she dove and tumbled, holding the baby close and trying not to hurt him as she rolled. There was a terrific explosion, and a woman nearby crumpled against the rail with a cry. Ontoquas found her feet again and dashed across the deck.
“You little devil!” shouted the sailor. He raised a whip. Ontoquas dodged and the crack sang out just behind her ear. She clutched the little baby tighter.
I must save this baby!
The man’s face contorted in fury. He reared back again. Behind him she could see a surge of dark bodies emerging from the main hatch, men howling tribal war cries.