We walked for what seemed like hours with no sound but the complaints of the animals and the creak of the wheels. Birds overhead made strange calls. A rabbit darted from the brush and someone’s dog chased it. Dark woods, so thick it made a roof over our heads, closed in upon us. In Jamaica, I was never without several strong slaves breaking out the forest for us to pass, my family never walking, always riding in a coach.
This was a land of cold, just as Ma used to tell in stories of Scotland and England. Was this also a place of brownies and trolls and the most terrible of all, fairies? Did duppies watch us? The forest seemed alive with strange sounds in dark misty dells just out of sight. I tried to remember the charm Patey and I had sung. I could not remember it. “Gumboo, gumboo,” I whispered, tapping one or the other of the goats with each word. I craned my neck at every turn to see Patey somewhere ahead.
Suddenly as a summer rain, a flutter of gasps and soft cries rose from our company. I looked toward the trees and the glade through which we had just passed seemed alive with movement. I thought it was rain, or wind, or a dozen wolves come for us. The bushes parted and the forms of men appeared, men with long black hair such as I had never seen, with faces painted red as a barn door. Some of them wore no shirts but breeches and vestments and leggings with wrappings on their feet. Bowmen all, they raised arrows toward us and we struggled keeping the animals straightened and still. The men were marvelous to look upon. The goats wandered as I stopped.
Reverend Johansen raised his hands and said, “Ho, brethren! Hello?” None of the men answered. He spoke again, first to us on the road, “Just some of God’s children we call Indians. I will trust that we will pass safely. Pray, brethren.”
“Indians,” whispered Birgitta.
To the Indians, he spoke in his sermonizing voice. “We are pilgrims. We go to a new settlement west of here. I have already spoken with your chief men. We are no enemies of the Red Man. He assured us we may pass.” The strangers spoke to one another in whispers. Reverend Johansen said a couple of the words he knew in Indian tongue. One of the Indians shouted at us. Running up and down the line of us, he waved his arm and menaced us with words.
“Let us move forward, friends,” Reverend Johansen said. “Move on, making no alarm. Show them we are just travelers.” The party started to move. The Indians stepped back, and with no more than the flutter of a leaf, they disappeared into the woods. The rest of that day we kept quiet and watchful.
“Birgitta? What is the name of the place where we go?”
“New Town.”
A town? My heart lifted. “Where does it lie?”
“By Collins Pond.”
“Shall I be able to send a letter from there?”
“Are you some queen of England to be sending letters about?”
I saw Patience walking far in front, but I could not leave the goats to go run ahead and find her. The strange sounds of the forest made me think I knew things that could not be known by mortals. We walked until the sun cast long shadows from the trees, dipping below them, and all was shadow and more shadow. We slept on the road itself that night. I sank where Mistress pointed, amidst the goats. Goats are naught but bones and bleating, and their hair was not warm nor their bodies soft. Of course, there was the smell, too, bitter as overripe vinegar, intrusive as bile.
The third morning, we came to a cleared place where several small houses, roughly fashioned of logs, clustered at the end of the road. I had never seen such houses, their only windows being places where the logs had been cut, and covered with shutters. I would be gone when the winter snow blew into those holes. The Haskens’ goats went into a fenced yard. The settlement house was luxurious compared to what they had before, though it held no upper floor. Everyone was to sleep together on the floor.
No sooner had we gotten a few things put inside than I heard one of the girls scream as if she had been torn limb from limb. The air filled with the odor of a bear. I knew it from the skin under my bed, only this was earthier, potent, sharp as a foaming horse. I rushed out the door in curiosity to see Christine and Lonnie standing at the edge of the forest. Christine sank to the ground as if the heart had gone out of her and her knees could not hold her. Master ran toward them, carrying a pickaxe. Lonnie came running past me and flew into Mistress’s arms while he ran to Christine, threw down his axe, and scooped her up in his arms. He carried her to the house and laid her before the fireplace. Mistress made a pallet on the floor and they laid Christine on it. She breathed with her mouth wide open. Mistress crooned and said, “Poor little thing. Poor thing. Birgitta? Is there water in the house?”
I got a bucket, saying, “Here it is, Mistress.” I almost added “you old spider,” but stopped myself.
Mistress dipped a rag in the bucket and wiped Christine’s face over and over again. She sang to her and murmured things I could not hear. I stepped back. This was the first time I had seen her care for anyone. Still, I thought, with all those stories about wolves tearing people limb from limb, why would the girl not fear so to see a bear? People in the settlement came and many had opinions about whether the girls had in fact seen an animal or were simply overwrought from the traveling. Neither of them could give witness to what had happened, so it was decided that they’d only had a moment of hysteria. No one asked me if I smelled any bears about, so I said nothing. It would serve them all right, I thought, were the whole family to be eaten alive by a single bear and there in its great stomach they could bewail their circumstances as I had in the hold of a slave ship.
That evening Birgitta and I helped Mistress prepare supper. Lonnie went back to braiding her hair though Christine continued entranced. She wet herself. Everyone had to sleep upon the floor, but they made me sleep next to her and I squirmed there in the dark, trying in the crush of bodies to make room between us in case she wet again.
The banging and pounding of building another house began almost before the sun was up. After the day of seeing the bear, while Christine stayed quiet, Lonnie became talkative and rambled about, getting into things, poking sticks in a hornet’s nest, putting her bonnet on a dog, dumping out the neighbors’ milk jug. She was made my charge to lead and watch over just like the goats.
* * *
Before we had been there a month, life found its routine. We worked in the kitchen. Mistress kneaded bread. Lonnie braided Christine’s hair. Christine knitted stockings. I did my chores happily wearing a new pair nearly every week. She stopped now and then and counted them over and over, trying, I suppose, to make sense of why she kept knitting but the stack never grew. There were still a dozen pairs in her basket. Yesterday I had gone through the pile of them, turning them all about, sticking one inside another at the toe and tying two in a knot, just to frustrate her. Then I felt guilty about such a mean trick on a girl who had lost her mind, so I offered to help her straighten them, carefully untying the ones I had tied. Christine smiled at me, and Mistress herself patted my head and said, “Good girl, Mary.” Birgitta saw her doing it and rushed to me, copying the words and patting, so that she could claim my goodness, I believed.
One day as I came from fetching water, a great roaring, so close I felt the hairs on my head stand forward, made all of us jump as one. I smelled the bear the moment the roar stopped echoing through the house. Goats bleated, and the growling rose. I raced to the window overlooking the goat pen. The bear had already killed two! It was eating one goat and growled at another live one. I slammed the shutter closed with such a bang that cups flew off the shelf inside. The bear left its meal and came toward the window. I shall never forget the sound of its huge paws crashing and clawing at that shutter, wrenching it from its straps. The bear’s foreleg and claws swept in through the hole, sending candlesticks and bread pans flying about the room. Its huge body lunged against the house and the wall itself swayed under the weight. Mistress and Birgitta screamed. Christine whimpered. Lonnie just sang merrily and kept on braiding, holding Christine in her chair by the hair.
Mistress
said, “Mary! Fetch Master and the other men!”
“Out the door?” I asked.
“Go get them! Fetch Master Hasken as I told you! Get out that door or I’ll—I’ll.” She left off speaking as the bear’s arm made another grab, this time taking with it a pudding. One pewter cup dangling from a curved claw disappeared out the window.
“I will not go outside with that thing there!” I screamed. No matter that the bear was on the side of the house away from the door, the thing was as tall as the walls and I had seen it run before, faster than a horse in full gallop.
Mistress picked up a carving knife and came toward me. “You get the men, Mary. Do as you’re told or I’ll cut off your nose.” The bear growled and Birgitta screamed. Mistress waved the knife at the door. “Back up, Birgitta, you’re too close to the window. Mary, I won’t tell you again. Run for help. Get out!”
“It will eat me! I shall not go!” I said. Watching that blade in her hand, I held to the seat of a three-legged stool that was light enough for me to swing. I picked it up. “You go outside, Mistress. You are grown.”
“You’re young and fast. You can do it,” Birgitta said. “Be brave. It’s only a bear.”
Christine slumped to the floor, jittering and shaking and drooling. The bear heaved its great weight against the wall again, and chinking fell from all around the room. Straw from the thatching sifted down upon our heads. Several pieces drifted into the fireplace and caught, leading fire out of the coals and spreading it onto the floor near Christine.
Mistress said, “Birgitta, open that door. Mary, run! Run, you little tart!” She waved the knife at me again and this time I held up the stool between us, the legs pointed at her. The bear reached into the window again. Birgitta beat at the beast’s paw with the iron fire poker, which made it angrier and more intent on breaking the walls. The door stood open. The bear roared. Mistress came at me wielding the knife. With all my strength I threw that stool at her, turned on my heels and dashed out the door.
I had no idea as I ran whether I had hurt her or even killed her. I did not care. I ran for my life, skirting wide around the clearing but stopping to look over my shoulder as I approached the last log house between me and the crowd of men working on it. The Haskens’ house was at one end of the clearing and the bear had not followed me. I ran straight to the side of Reverend Johansen and pulled his coat. I hopped up and down and my lips moved but my tongue had dried and grown hard and immovable as a pack of sand between my teeth.
He searched the faces of the men and knelt before me. “Speak up, child,” he said.
I clenched my eyes and choked out, “Bear.”
The men chased the bear into the woods again by clanging shovels and axes and beating barrels. Someone brought out a pistol and shot at it but no one knew whether or not the ball found its mark. Reverend Johansen told me in the presence of all listening to him that I had been brave to run for help. Our neighbors came to the house that evening, and as if they never tired of the story, they looked at every scratch the bear had left upon the house, the cookware, and the goats. They questioned me and many nodded their heads, saying I had courage to run for help with the monster at the gate.
When they said that, I looked straight into Mistress’s face, wondering if she would say that she had threatened cutting off my nose to make me do it. I pondered whether that would make her look a fiend, and almost was tempted to offer the story. In the silence as she and I locked eyes, I thought that bearing witness against her cruelty might have revealed my threatening her with the stool and they would believe me to be a defiant and violent person. Was I? I could only say yes, but why risk another beating by admitting it? No one mentioned either the thrown milk stool or the waving knife. I decided that one did not exist without the other in that story, and keeping quiet was my best answer.
Reverend Johansen held up his hand. “Gentlefolk? As we build our meetinghouse we should also construct a garrison wall. Build it high enough to keep us from bears and thieves.” I wiggled through their ranks, making myself as small as a mouse, to stand near Reverend Johansen. I liked his way of saying things so that people listened. I got an idea that grew as the men talked. I had been sold more than once like a barrel of oats, my ownership transferred from pirates to privateers to the Haskens. Why could I not be sold again to Rachael and Reverend Johansen? I could tell him about Mistress stealing my coins and he would listen. And if he would not, since Rachael had taken my coins for her dowry, I would steal them back.
That evening I waited until the family headed outside for the privy—and thank goodness for better weather and the use of it—before bedding down for the night. Birgitta bent over Christine, who was still mute and lay fixed with a huge cloth baby-damper. I went to lie in my usual place, between Birgitta and Christine. I whispered, “Mother Birgitta?” just to watch the old woman’s face, to see whether she warmed to the title as she had before.
Her eyes opened. “What, Mary?”
“Do you think the new Mistress Johansen might need a serving girl?”
“Maybe. That be her own accord, now.”
“I was just thinking, if she chose to buy me to wait upon her, Master and Mistress Hasken could have money to get Christine to a leech.”
“We don’t believe in leeching and spells, and Miss Christine has all the caring anybody could want. The Great Physician will cure her when He’s ready.”
I curled up my knees. I didn’t know how to answer that one. “Mistress Johansen must be worried about her sister.”
“Not likely. More worried about keeping the reverend close to her bed.”
“Would Mistress sell me to her?”
“Sell you? Mary, you was give to me.”
“Would you sell me to her?”
Birgitta looked stunned. “Whatever for?”
“She might be a lady, more fine, with her own maid.”
Birgitta grunted and rolled away from me, facing the wall. “And I don’t need help here? What with all these to see to and all that’s left of me goats? Well. You can’t—”
“I meant to please you. I thought you might want her to be a fine lady and all, since she is the eldest.”
“You want to get out of work, since she is alone and you’d have no chores at all.”
The family took their places at pallets on the floor. I leaned upon one elbow toward Birgitta, forcing myself not to shrink from her growing anger, as if I felt no concern about that but merely wished to please. I whispered as softly as a breath, “I do not want to be lazy. I would never want to leave you. I could only be happy there if you came, too.”
Birgitta sat up then, staring at the fireplace stones as if there were some answer printed on them. After a bit, she lay down and muttered, “Well, there’s no place to keep the goats at their house,” and soon began to snore.
The new church house was going up, but all that existed now were rows of logs high as my waist. On Sundays the community gathered there with their slaves and made worship, with the wood chips of the coming church house perfuming the air. Rough logs made for seats and the sap from them soaked into people’s clothes. They sang and prayed and Reverend Johansen talked and read from his Bible. During the hours of worship, some children ran and played, and those who needed one thing or another got up and came back at will. I was not allowed to run and play, nor to sit with Patience, for I had to mind Lonnie all the time.
Reverend Johansen opened his text and spoke in a somber voice that came from some unearthly plain. It echoed against the trees around us and raised my heart with angel’s wings. “Psalm Sixty-two.” He began to read. After each verse he spoke at great length. I stared at his features as he told each phrase, as if he could divine the various natures of my sin. Lies and deceiving, these were my wickedness. By the time his speech was finished and he said “Amen,” tears slithered down my face with abandon.
We picnicked on the planks of the new church floor. Christine leaned against a pillar sitting upon the ground. I covered her
with a blanket and sat nearby where I could watch Lonnie prattling with a wooden spoon, and using an old, rounded knife, I nibbled at my portion of corn pudding.
A shadow darkened the air about me so that I looked up. Reverend Johansen stood over me the way Rafe MacAlister had once done. I tried to smile but did not speak. “Mary?” he began, “You seem touched by God’s word. Was it the Spirit moved you?”
“I know not, sir. I feel it may have been something like it.”
“Is that all you have in your bowl? Just corn pudding? Have you no meat?”
I bowed my head, afraid lest he be trying to have me say aught against the master. Even as I did I wondered if I would know a deceit or a true question, since my own heart was tangled in lies and conniving. “Mistress provides all I need, your lordship.”
“I’m not a lord, Mary. You mustn’t call me that. Call me ‘Reverend’ or ‘Parson’ or ‘Brother Johansen.’ Now. Would you have some meat if I gave it to you?”
“Yes, Parson. Gladly.” He lifted half his portion of stewed meat into my porringer. I gasped. “Thank you, Reverend Johansen.”
“There,” he said. “That will help you grow up well and strong.”
“Reverend, should I confess my sins to you? I have been exceedingly wicked.”
“No, Mary. You confess only to God. Believe me, He has already forgiven you.”
He seemed so kind, I almost admitted I had planned to steal the coins Rachael had stolen from me, but I decided that was a sin suitable for divine ears alone. Rachael had exchanged her life of crowded entombment for one little different from my own. Never did a day go by that she did not bustle about doing washing, digging a garden, sweeping and tending and carrying and cleaning. Her limp body firmed up and plumped up and her eyes even seemed not quite so crossed. Her temperament, however, was crosser than ever, as she was unused to the labor put upon her. I asked, “Could I not come and be your servant instead of the Haskens’?”