Page 28 of Dark Tides
“That was then,” Edward said. “When we first arrived there was real friendship, I know. This is now: it’s changed. They’ve changed.”
“The savages won’t spare you if it comes to a fight of English against Indians,” William said. “They’re cruel enemies, Ned.”
Ned nodded, reluctant to argue with men who had been his officers, and served in the highest council in England. “I really think it was us who were cruel,” he volunteered quietly. “At Mystic Fort we fired the village with old people and women and children inside, and shot those that ran out. Even the Indians who served with us, the Narragansett, cried that it was too much! Too much—those were their very words. They couldn’t believe that we would burn children and women alive.”
“That was thirty years ago,” William said. “Ancient history. And worse things happened in Ireland.”
“And anyway, they make war like that now,” Edward said grimly. “They’ve been quick to learn, they burn now, and they scalp too.”
Ned threw up his hands. “Sirs, I’ll not argue with you,” he said. “I came to see that you’re well and pay my respects.”
William patted him on the back. “And we’d be fools to fall out with you,” he said. “I don’t forget that it was you that brought us here, two days’ trail through the woods and up the river never setting a foot wrong. We were glad then that you were friendly with savages and knew their trails. We’d never have got here without them to guide us and you to command them. You’re a good friend, Ned, we don’t forget it.”
“I thank you, sir.”
“But their leader is a king, isn’t he?” Edward could never let an argument go. “The Pokanoket call him King Philip? Never tell me that you’d serve a king rather than your brothers, Ned!”
Ned smiled. “He’s not a king like Charles Stuart: a tyrant. He’s their leader, but they consent to him leading them. They don’t call him a king, that’s the name we gave him. They call him Massasoit. His real name is Po Metacom. They don’t call him Philip. It was us gave him the name Philip, and the title King, out of respect to his father, who truly was our savior the first winter we got here.”
“That old story?” Edward queried.
“They’ll never forget it. The English would all have died that first winter, but the Pokanoket built them shelters and gave them food. When the English robbed native corn stores, the Pokanoket gave them more, freely. That’s part of their religion, to give to someone who has nothing. But you know, we even dug up their graves for the treasures that they had buried with their dead?”
Edward grimaced. “I hadn’t heard that.”
“It doesn’t reflect very well on us, so it’s not often told,” Ned said wryly. “But we were like greedy beasts that first winter, and they were forgiving. We promised them then that we’d only come to trade: us on the coast, wanting no more than trading posts on the coast, and all the land should always be theirs. That’s how people thought it would be. D’you remember, before our war, when King Charles was still on the throne, nobody ever thought we’d live here? Everyone thought the New World would be just for fishing and a few trading posts?”
“It’s true,” William Goffe ruled. “It never looked like a country for settling, it was like Africa or the East. Somewhere that you’d visit to make a fortune and be glad to get home alive. All the early settlements died or gave up.”
“Aye, just so. But now this pickthank comes to my door and tells me that the land is empty—empty! So the English have the right to everything, that he wants to be a master. Doesn’t even know how much land there is. Doesn’t know beyond Hatfield, won’t ever go upriver for fear of not getting back before dark. Doesn’t even know how many natives there are. Thinks he’s a hero to get as far northas Hadley. Thinks he’s deep in an empty wilderness when he comes through the town gate to my lot. Doesn’t know nowt!”
William Goffe laughed at Ned’s indignation and poured a glass of small ale for him from a jug on the table. “He’s got you rattled,” he remarked, and waited for the rueful warmth of Ned’s reluctant smile.
“He’s the sort of man who decides what side he’s on, when he sees who’s winning,” Ned warned them. “The sort that welcomed you as heroes, like they did in Boston when you got here, but then as soon as they heard the death sentence from the English courts, decided that they’d rather send you back to England for trial. No heart for one side or another. No heart at all.”
“I suppose so,” William agreed. There was a pause as he poured more small ale. “Who’s like us?” he asked in the old drinking oath they had picked up from the Battle of Dunbar when they had defeated the royalist Scots and won a victory for the common men of England and the Commonwealth.
“Damn few, and they’re all dead,” Ned replied.
They clinked glasses and then fell silent for a moment.
“No free-born Englishmen would ever send us back,” Edward said. “I know they didn’t dare to defy the king’s proclamation openly; but they passed us hand to hand in secret till we were safe here.”
“I don’t know how they can bear a king in England,” William said. “After living in freedom! After godly rule!”
“Would you go back to fight against Charles the Second?” Ned asked curiously.
“I’d sail tomorrow. Wouldn’t you? I wait for the call, I expect it, any day now.”
William laughed shortly. “Well, it’s a feud now! What with naming me as unforgivable, putting a price on my head, and hunting me down through the old world and the new, spying on my wife and daughter! Executing my brothers-in-arms! I’ll never forget hiding in the cave from his spies. I won’t forgive living here, hidden by friends, ducking into the cellar at the first hint of strangers, putting all of you in danger as well as myself.”
The men were silent, thinking of the old battles they had won and the final battle they had lost, that had driven them into exile.
“I suppose I’d fight against him if I had to,” Ned said slowly. “If Iwas called. But I’d hoped to leave the old country and the wars of the old country, and live in peace. It’s not that England was ever a kindly mother to me or to mine.”
“No wife?” Edward asked, missing his own wife, Mary, in distant England.
“No wife,” Ned confirmed.
