Flight of the Sparrow by Amy Belding Brown Read Free Book Online

in these perilous times.
    “The girl’s sin was severe,” Ann Joslin says. “Surely we have not forgotten the child was a Negro?”
    “Aye,” says Elizabeth Kettle, nodding.
    “Does that make him less her child?” Mary asks. “Does it make her heart less desolate when he is lost to her? Think on it. What would we feel were one of ours sold into slavery?” And then Mary says what she has not spoken before outside Joseph’s presence. “If the Indian menace is indeed the chastening hand of God upon Lancaster, I warrant it is not brought down by Bess’s sin, but by our own insufficiency of compassion toward her.”
    The women instantly fall silent and none of them—not even Elizabeth or Hannah—will look at her. Finally Elizabeth coughs and, to relieve the awkwardness in the room, begins to speak of Indians. She declares they are without mercy. She says that her husband heard some ghastly particulars when he was in Concord the past week. “’Tis said in Swansea they slew seven men and cut off their heads and set them on poles in the wilderness. And I have heard it whispered that in another place they bound all the men together and made them watch as they butchered their cattle and swine before their eyes.”
    “They kill our animals to provoke us,” Priscilla says. “To unhinge our minds. They know how we prize them.”
    Mary nods, for she too has heard of this cruel Indian practice.
    “That is not the worst of it.” Elizabeth lets the linen napkin she is hemming fall into her lap and strokes it, as if it were a purring cat from which she seeks comfort. “They delight in torture. It be both sport and pleasure to them.”
    Ann Joslin moans and Mary feels her hair rise, though it is safely tucked beneath her cap.
    “Some they cut off their hands and feet,” Elizabeth continues. “Some they take their scalps and flaunt them as trophies. Once they have exhausted their cruelties, they dispatch the men with a blow to the head. And before they kill the women, they defile them.”
    Mary is frightened, yet something perverse in her makes her want to hear more, to probe each horror. She bites the inside of her lip hard, to still her querying tongue. “If the Indians come to Lancaster,” she says firmly, “I will never let them take me alive. I would rather die than subject myself to their depravities.”
    “Pray God that we all be spared,” Ann Joslin whispers and folds her hands over the unborn child that has already grown large within her.
    “I doubt they will come,” Hannah says. “Why would they comein winter, when they must wallow in snow? If they attack Lancaster, I am sure they will wait until spring, when they can strike quickly. And, in any case, soon we shall be well defended.”
    “Let us hope so,” Mary says. “For I have not heard that Indians govern themselves by reason, let alone good sense.”
    The women fall silent. For months, they have worried their memories with the August terrors as one dabs at a sore that will not heal. They have repeated the details over and over: the bloated, mutilated bodies, the charred timbers of the MacLoud house, the poor fatherless Benet children. Their horror is like a blaze that singes the hairs on a woman’s arm when she stirs the pottage.
    When the fire dies down, Mary banks it and the women retire—Mary to the bedstead where her daughters are already curled together in sleep, her sisters and neighbors to their pallets. Though it is late and she is exhausted, Mary does not sleep but lies staring at the shadows that move across the curtains. She hears children’s gurgles and sighs as they sleep, the drowsy murmurs of adults. She wonders how Bess Parker fares. She thinks about Indians and their fierce pagan ways, their disquieting stealth. Even now they might be skulking through the woods nearby. Or laying a trap to butcher Joseph and Henry on their way home from Boston.
    It begins to snow and with the snow comes sleet, small hard flakes that tick