Prologue
Sabbath, February 10, 1676
Morning light hits the tops of the trees on the hill over the small village of Lancaster. A small outbuilding is on fire, figures move through the last shadows of night to beat back the flames.
400 Indians in war regalia descend on the village, moving east to west, destroying everything in their path. The Rowlandson garrison house stands at the west edge of the village.
“He’s in Connecticut, preaching. He thought he’d be back in time to bring us to Boston,” Mary says.
“William’s had the wagon packed with supplies ever since your husband left,” answered Patience. A bible, splayed out, lies facedown on the bare side table. They kneel side-by-side, watching the fighting outside their window. Over Mary’s shoulder, puffs of smoke waft into the room.
“The fire’s out,” shouts a flanker from the next room.
Patience breaks off her conversation with a gasp. “My God! The butcher!”
Mary follows her gaze out the window. They are both frozen in place as they watch the butcher rush out of his house, the baby cradled in the crook of his left arm, his right hand on his wife’s arm, urging her to match his hurried steps. A pack of Indians with identical blue stripes painted diagonally across their faces round the back of his house and descend, hatchets raised as they knock all three on their heads. The cracks mingled with the Indian war whoops and shouts. Dead. They lay in a spreading pool of their own blood. The butcher and his wife and their baby. Dead. The butcher’s apprentice and the delivery boy are neatly rounded up and hustled away toward the woods.
Patience grabs Mary’s arm, turning Mary toward her, “We must get to higher ground -”
Mary: “But this is our home -”
Patience: “We can’t wait – The Lord wants us to be safe, let’s take the children and run to the woods -”
Mary: “It’s too late now, let’s stay, the men have guns. They will protect us.” Underneath her breath, “O Lord God, fight for me…”
Patience: “Everything is burning. We need to go! Let’s save ourselves. Run to the woods -”
Mary: “But Sarah won’t be able to keep up.” She looks out the window without seeing. Underneath her breath, “…and my foes must flee; strengthen me and…”
“Mary, it’s the only way,” Patience says, grabbing her arm and shaking it, “leave before this house becomes an oven. We’ll cook here like sacrificial meat.”
A deep voice shouting orders and the sound of the table being dragged over the floorboards can be heard from downstairs. Outside the window, a man stands to the side of the house, while another runs away. The man at the side of the house is knocked in the head and is dead before he hits the ground. The other is hit by a bullet. He falls, and turns to face his attackers.
“Please, spare my life on the Lord’s day. I’ll give you anything, please don’t kill me. I have money, please take my money, how much money will you take to spare my life, I have money, I can give you….”
The war club hits his head in mid-sentence, then the Indians strip him naked, slice him down the middle with their sharp blades and spread his bowels across the ground. Dead.
“We must stay and fight,” says Mary, staring. Underneath her breath, she mutters, “…I stand unmoved, unmoveable.”
Patience: “It’s filling up with smoke. I can’t breathe. We must go.”
A door slams downstairs. Three villagers huddle outside the front door of the garrison house, waiting for a long enough pause in the shooting and rush of oncoming Indians to make their escape. They creep out and are struck down by bullets from the Indians shooting from the roof of their barn. Indians whooping, hollering, burning and destroying all before them. Closer.
The report of a gun followed by a scream from the next room draws Mary and Patience away from the window. Patience’s son William bends over his arm, blood soaking through his shirtsleeve.
“They’ve got flax and hemp from the barn, they’re coming back to the house,” shouts one of the flankers.
“They’re setting it alight again,” the other. He leans out and swishes the fire out with his rake. The hail of bullets fired by the Indians behind the hill drives him away from the window, and those Indians below easily set it again, this time it takes, and the flames creep out and up.
“Mary, take the children outside, I’ll bind William’s wound and help him downstairs. We’ll join you by the well.”
“I’ll wait for you and then return to defend the house.”
Mary tears herself away from the scene and goes downstairs. From behind the hill, from the barn, from any nearby shelter they have come. Bullets fall against the house like hail, a shout, and a man is down on the gathering room floor, blood oozing from his shoulder. One man wounded, then another. Then a third. Shouts all round from those inside, war hoots and the yelps of the Indians outside, the children crying and calling for their mothers, the mothers calling out for their children, themselves, their savior. Those inside fight for their lives from any vantage point they can find, others wallowing in the spreading blood, senseless now to the fight raging around them.
“Lord, what shall we do?” cry the mothers.
Mary looks across the house, sees the wisps of smoke curling around the edges, hears the shouts and moans of her neighbors. She must go. She gathers her children, holds young Sarah in her arms, ushers Patience’s boy to her, and opens the front door.
Stepping over the threshold, hand on the doorjamb to steady herself, the Indians fire. Bullets so thick, for a moment Mary thought that they had only thrown handfuls of stones against the house, until she felt the entire house rattle under her hand still on the jamb. She falls back inside and slams the door to protect the children.
The smoke is getting thicker, the furrier is no longer moaning in the pool of blood on the floor. Shouts from the flankers, her sister somewhere upstairs beating at the flames now with a blanket, she and William blocked from the staircase by the spreading smoke and cinders, the return fire from the few rifles inside reverberating through the floorboards, women crying, women shouting, men screaming directions and orders. One pocket of silence in the corner by Mary: the six hunting dogs, huddled, eyes wide, tails drawn in, silent, the pool of piss spreads from their shaking legs.
Outside the Indians wait with guns firing, spears in hand, hatchets raised in anticipation. Inside, the fire roars now, belching smoke, devouring the furniture, the walls, the dead on the floor. Mary looks across the house, sees it being replaced by flame, hears the shouts, coughing, moaning of her neighbors, the stifled panting of the silent dogs. She must go. Her brother-in-law shuffles to her side, staunching the blood oozing from the wound in his throat. She gathers her children, taking the youngest into her arms once again, her sister’s boy by her side, she turns, opens the front door, and plunges outside.
Time slows. Another volley of gunfire, the bullets in the air like another handful of stones thrown at them. She feels her brother-in-law fall, the Indians halloo-ing, hollering, jeering as they descend upon him, stripping the clothes from his dead body. Bullets thick in the air like a plague of locusts. Mary is hit, the bullet pinching her side, traveling clear through her and into the daughter in her arms. She looks back at the house in time to see William, her sister’s son, leap from the empty flanker, floating in the air for a moment as the sun hits his belt buckle and hears the sharp crack of his leg as he lands on it. Time resumes.
The Indians rise up from desecrating Mary’s brother-in-law, turn as she watches William struggle to rise with his broken leg. A breath while Mary looks on with concern, with love and yet able to do nothing, and the Indians watch for amusement, jeering to see him flail about in pain. They descend upon him, hatchets flashing as his belt buckle did, first the flash of iron, then again the hatchets, this time dripping with William’s blood, blood everywhere, running down to their heels as they rise again, yelling out in triumph. Mary lays on the ground, the baby still in her arms, both of them bleeding.
Back in the burning house, Patience stands by the threshold, looking out. Indians haul mothers one way, the children another. Some lay together, wallowing in blood, not moving. Her eldest son comes down the stairs from the flanker, his shirt torn in several places, blood spreading from a wound in his shoulder.
“William is dead,” he says.
“Lord, let me die with them,” Patience says, horror and panic in her face.
The bullet hits immediately, laying her down dead over the threshold.
The sun is overhead, its cold winter rays blinding without warming. Mary lays on the ground, pinned by pain and her effort to shelter her bleeding daughter. There were 37 people in the garrison house just this morning, where are they all now? How many escaped?
A Wampanoag stands up over William’s desecrated body and turns toward Mary. He strides three paces, looms over her and raises his hammer.