The old man shuffled closer to Cornwall and said something clipped and guttural. He gestured towards one of the warriors, who brought him a pipe. The pipe was lit and the old man puffed smoke at Cornwall’s shoulders, at his face, his feet and groin, until the smoke had gathered around him like a garment. Cornwall grinned wider, breathing in the acrid, woody scent, laughing in delighted expectation. It was the first sound he had made in weeks and he looked into Brudloe’s eyes, expecting to see a mirror to his own mirth. But Cornwall saw in Brudloe’s face an expression beyond alarm, something closer to panic.
They were soon led to a small hut, fed and watered, their neck nooses slipped free. And though they were still tethered by their wrists, they were able to move freely about the village. Day by day they watched the gathering in of more warriors, bringing their own women and children, carrying baskets or freshly killed game, and Cornwall anticipated a festival or feast of some sort. Despite Brudloe’s ceaseless hissing plots for escape, at times throughout the night—“You hold the guard, I’ll slit his throat” and so on—Cornwall had no great desire to leave.
As the days passed, they were allowed to watch the warriors’ games: nets on sticks which hurled a ball of rawhide back and forth to opposing teams, and even a kind of dicing with carved bones painted in colors. Once, Brudloe’s bonds were cut, and to his great surprise, he was given a knife. He stood staring at the weapon until he realized he was to fight a group of young warriors who called and pointed to him encouragingly to take his ground. When he didn’t fight, the blade was simply taken from him without a struggle, and the warriors instead admired the scars on Brudloe’s head and face. They later led him to a clearing and painted his forehead and shaved the bristle on his scalp, leaving a patch for a topknot to grow.
When evening came, they were separated, Brudloe taken into the larger dwelling, where the prophet lived, and Cornwall propped up against a large boulder, his restraints tightened. He was brought meat, which the old woman chewed for him like the warrior had done, gently placing the pap on his tongue with her fingers. Even though her eyes were black and slanted over high, angled cheekbones, she put him in mind of his mother. She once grinned at him, her teeth worn down and mulish-looking, and so he closed his eyes, content to rest while she sat with him, whittling pine branches to sharp points.
The people continued to gather, the women bringing wood for the communal fire, piling it close to Cornwall’s feet. They addressed him solemnly in a language that sounded to him like the gentle rattling together of beads, and he nodded to them, grateful for their care and for sharing their feast.
The night sky was clear and he watched the stars emerge randomly, untidily. He followed the thread-thin path of a comet racing towards the North Star. His bindings began to chafe his wrists and he shifted uncomfortably. There were smaller fires burning, dotted around the village, and the people began to sing, chanting and beating their feet on the ground, already packed solid with the movement of generations. Soon, he imagined, they would release his bonds and bring him into the large hut as they had done Brudloe, scraping his scalp clean, stripping away the filthy, louse-ridden rags he had worn since getting off the ship in Boston, letting him inhale the perfumed smoke of the long pipe the prophet had waved before his face.
He thought he caught a glimpse of Brudloe standing in the riptide of dancing bodies, his painted face underlit by firelight, but the transformation was so complete, Cornwall couldn’t be sure it was he. The chanting had taken on a new urgency, with cries and mimicry of wild woodland things: the leap of stags, the frilled threatening shuffle of badgers. Cornwall shifted restlessly, bringing his arms up to show the old woman he was ready to be cut loose and join the feast. A group of women had joined her, their faces expectant, close to feral as they lit the kindling at Cornwall’s feet. He was taken again by their beauty, the sharp angles of their faces shining like mica freshly planed. He suddenly remembered as a young man seeing, on a raised stage in London, a rendering of a fairy folk tale. The fairy queen had been bewitched and fell to lusting after a man with the head of an ass. He remembered how he had howled with the absurdity of it, his laughter carried up with the voices of the other watchers to the uppermost tiers. He guffawed out loud with the memory of it. “Fairies,” he said, surprised and elated to hear the sound of his own voice again. “Fairies,” he said again and again, repeating the word with increasing desperation as the villagers first pierced his flesh with the pine shafts and then set them on fire, so that like a living flame he ran the gauntlet of warriors wielding clubs; and then with terror as they pushed him into the charred kindling, until he had burned beyond the ability to speak.
CHAPTER 20
MARTHA RESTED IN the yard, its sparse grasses bleached in the sun to jackstraws, with Joanna in her lap. They played with a porcupine that John had fashioned from a pinecone, its eyes and nose made of dried currants. Will had taken it from his sister earlier, taunting her and stripping some of the quills from its back, until Martha had rescued it, giving him a bruising pinch on the arm for his cruelty. Joanna had cried for a while until John came and made faces at her, bringing a smile. He had been digging out a Dutch cellar for the apples and roots they would soon be harvesting, and he came to sit next to Martha in the shade, brushing away the autumn flies with his hat, mopping at the sweat on his neck with the tail of his shirt.
Although the days were still warm, the nights were suddenly turning cooler and Martha had felt of late an earthly gathering in, a compacting together of living things; animals burrowing deeper within their nests at night, fish lying weighted and sluggish in the streambeds and shallow ponds. Even the clouds ran low and stuttering in their early-morning progress, as though seeking warmth from the ground.
Martha watched John’s expressive mouth, downturned and moody, gently refusing Joanna’s entreaties to recite some silly fragment of song. A pall of worry had settled into his reddish highland face, making him look drawn and sickly. He had, in fact, over the most recent days come to look as miserable as she’d ever seen him, and she wondered if his unhappiness sprang not only from worry over Asa Rogers’s suit for the land but also from her own deepening closeness to Thomas.
It came to her in that moment that she didn’t know how John happened to be with Thomas. She knew he was not related by blood, and, besides his youth, his actions, quick-witted and foolish at times, were at odds with Thomas’s sober and deliberate nature. With ever greater frequency, she had heard John’s worried questioning of Thomas about the miller, seeking reassurance that Daniel, if not Patience, would keep to his bargain about the land promised to them. John could not have failed to hear the arguments between husband and wife after they had retired to bed. The entire household could hear Patience’s low beseeching tone turn first sour and then loudly demanding as Daniel reasoned with her to put aside her expectations of profiting from another’s loss.
In the mornings, Patience would sulk and be cross until Daniel made much of her, telling her what next he would bring from Boston. Patience had always been desirous of comfort, Martha knew, but grief had turned her venal. Her behavior had put all of them on edge, and Martha had begun to feel the pricking of thorny resentment at her cousin’s avarice. If Thomas had resentments or worries, he kept them close-handed and hidden; but even he had become more reticent and silent, as though he had been hollowed out from the long, clandestine telling of his former life as a soldier in England. His eyes at all times, though, followed Patience like a man walking in deep brush, tracking the progress of an adder.
Martha shifted Joanna more comfortably on her lap and regarded the distracted frown on John’s face. “Your father, does he yet live?” she asked.
“No. My own father’s long gone. He died durin’ the war.”
“How, then, do you come to be with Thomas?”
John smiled sadly. “I was made orphan when my father was killed at Naseby, so I have no memories of him. They were great friends, though, Thomas and he, after Thomas saved his life at Edgehill.” He took an apple out of a pouch at his waist and began to peel the skin away in one long curl. “ ’Twas Thomas who sent a share of his soldier’s wage to my kin so we wouldn’t starve. I found my way to him in London when I came of age an’ crossed on the boat with him to the colonies.” He dangled the curling skin in front of Joanna, making it dance. “He has been both father and friend to me.”
Placing a hand over his arm, she said quietly, “I know about Thomas. He has told me all.” She had spoken softly, almost to a whisper, but John looked at her sharply, suddenly wary. He quickly handed the skinless apple to Joanna, gently dislodging her from Martha’s lap. He pointed to the trench he had been digging and said, “There are more in the straw, Joanna. How many do ye think ye can hold in yer apron?”
She skipped away and he watched her sorting through the straw at the lip of the shallow depression,
