Page 157 of Dark Tides
“She can come aboard. Not you,” the Captain replied. They heard the clink as he armed his pistol and they saw the black muzzle aimed down into the little craft.
“I won’t come without him,” Sarah said flatly. “He comes up first. Then me. And if you don’t take us on board I go straight back to the Bocca di Leone and denounce you.”
“What for?” came the muted roar. “What the hell for, you little bitch?”
“Smuggling,” Sarah said flatly. “Smuggling antiquities. And you’ve got a forger on board with you. Taking a criminal out of the country, with his forged goods.”
“Bathsheba!” Felipe reproached her, peering down at the boat.
“They’re your own damned antiquities!” Captain Shore roared.
Sarah shook her head. “All his,” she said. “His and his accomplice, the Nobildonna. Forgers, perjurers, and grave robbers. And everyone knows you’ve worked with them before, carried forged papers, andsold to foreign courts without an export license, and you’re aiding his escape from justice now!”
“You, madam, are a little whore,” the Captain swore. “And keep your voice down.”
Sarah, knowing she had won, beamed up at Captain Shore and held the ladder for her uncle. “Just a milliner,” she said.
JANUARY 1671, HADLEY, NEW ENGLAND
Ned, snowed in at the ferry cabin, not knowing what he thought, not knowing what he felt, not knowing the right thing to do, went from one bitter conclusion to another. He was trapped indoors by a relentless blizzard that made it dangerous even to dig out a path to feed the beasts, who were warm behind a wall of snow. Getting into town to see his old commanders or his minister was impossible. He was in a rage of indecision which seemed to be echoed outside his cabin by the wild storm of the weather.
He was bitter and isolated but not lonely. He did not miss the company of the townspeople, he felt that he did not care if he never heard another of the hateful words they said. He did not want to see Mrs. Rose with the hot spots of anger on her cheeks and the strain in her face. He did not want to see Quiet Squirrel or hear her steady counsel either. He could not think of her without wondering if the snowsnake path had brought her a message to fall on the people of Hadley the moment that the Massasoit received his summons to go to Plymouth and answer for his actions. The people at Hadley might think that they could order the Massasoit to attend in secret, and that none of the scattered tribes would even know, but Ned knew that he would neverobey men he did not regard as his equals, let alone his superiors, and he had friends and allies all around them.
The hope that other tribes would not know was folly. Ned knew that all the neighboring tribes would know at once. They had been communicating all winter, they had probably agreed a signal. The moment the Massasoit got an insulting summons, the English would find themselves isolated and outnumbered even in the biggest towns. A little place like Hadley could be obliterated in one night.
There was only one person that Ned wanted to see, there was only one person whose opinion he wanted to hear, there was only one person who was, like him, between the two worlds: John Sassamon, the Christian Indian, minister to the congregation at Natick, and Wussausmon, the same man but in different clothes, the advisor and translator to the Massasoit, the translator and advisor to the English: the go-between in the heart of this crisis.
Ned was so anxious in the days when dawn did not come till halfway through the morning, and then it was often a sky dark with snow clouds, that he thought he might summon Wussausmon by wishing for him, as if he were the devil, like his brother-translators. Or he might call on John Sassamon through prayer—like a disciple in the Bible stories. But one day, as Ned was pouring a jug of boiling water into the earthenware bowl of ice in the cowpen, he heard a shout from where the wicket gate was buried under the snow and saw Wussausmon himself waiting courteously outside the garden where the fence should have been.
“Come in! Come in!” Ned shouted. “Am I glad to see you!”
“I can’t stay,” Wussausmon said, gliding towards him on his snowshoes. “But I was going downstream and thought I would come to say good-bye.”
Ned splashed water on the straw as his hand shook. “Good-bye? Won’t you step inside and get warm?”
“No, I’m warm as it is. But I would not go past your house,Nippe Sannup, without a greeting.”
“Don’t go,” Ned said quickly. “You can eat with me? I have some succotash on the fire.”
Wussausmon dived into a pocket under his cape and brought out a strip of dried meat. “Try this,” he suggested.
He held it out to Ned and Ned nibbled the end. The rich warm taste of dried moose tongue filled his mouth. “That’s good,” he said ruefully. “Better than my succotash!”
Generously, Wussausmon tore off a strip. “Put it in the succotash,” he said. “It will flavor the whole pot. And don’t forget to give thanks.”
“But where are you going in such a hurry?” Ned asked. “Oh—Wussausmon, are you going to Montaup?”
“There are many gathering there,” Wussausmon said. “You told them? You warned your people?”
“I did. But it didn’t do any good,” Ned said, looking away from the direct dark gaze and staring instead at the bare black trunks of the trees and the white stripes of snow on their bark, at the delicate lines of ice on every twig. “I am sorry, I said everything that I could—but they are determined that King Philip—Massasoit—shall answer to them. They know of the gatherings, they know he is stockpiling weapons. I told them it all but they’re not going to make peace; they’re going to summon him to answer.”
“I will have to warn them,” Wussausmon said. “I will go to Plymouth myself. As the Massasoit’s translator I must be believed. I will tell them that he must have his rights under their own law. I know the law, I can read it. I will have to make them listen to me.”
“They’re frightened, they won’t listen,” Ned said, and at once cursed himself for telling an Indian that the white men were frightened. “Lord, I shouldn’t have said that to you. Wussausmon, we have been friends, we cannot be on the brink of being enemies. Mrs. Rose—the minister’s housekeeper—she’s talking about leaving here altogether, going back to Boston.”
“Will you go with her?”
Ned looked from the frosted trees to the great river flowing under the thick ice, the forest on the other side, and the snowcap on his little house where the chimney sent a single stream of smoke into the translucent sky. “How can I? How can I leave here? This is my home!”
