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I Will Walk This Path Again

John Deakins

1

Grantville texts knew a great deal about many things, but they knew nothing about butterflies. The searing storm over the Sahara’s Massif de l’Aïr rolled down its slopes and raced toward the Atlantic, but some distant air-pressure fluctuation caused a sand dune in its path to slip. That stole only a pinch of the wind’s energy, but enough.

It nursed at the warm ocean’s breast off Africa. Any watcher from space would have seen it swell into a hurricane. In the year 1635, however, there were no human watchers in space. Offspring of desert heat and warm water, it should have blossomed hugely, and it did grow, only a trifle stunted. It would never have been a Category 5, but its destiny should have been to spread its cloudy wings into a Category 3 hurricane. It was meant to own a name—The Great Colonial Hurricane of 1635— a contender among champion storms, but for that one sand dune . . . 

It lacked that final strength to slam Long Island and to rake New England with destroying, windy fingers. Its unstoppable breath should have killed, toppled forests, and sent ships to watery graves. Instead, the cooler Atlantic waters turned it toward New Jersey’s thinly settled shore. It would have to be satisfied with raining millions of gallons onto the Hudson Valley, dragging its tattered skirts across land, dying slowly, clawing toward the parent ocean. It was still a storm, but it didn’t send humans fleeing in terror: only hunching their shoulders against the downpour, eyeing swollen rivers, and frowning skyward.

It could expect resurrection. The African Sahara had grown no cooler; its mountains were no less steep; its hostility to humanity remained unweakened. Warm equatorial waters continued to nurse its countless siblings, but in that year, it could only spew curses, sinking into the chill Atlantic, merging again with worldwide waters.


2

“John Eliot! Quit mooning in the doorway. You don’t need to make the walk to the meetinghouse! It’s raining, and you’d be soaked before you arrived. Look at that sky! It’s going to rain more; it shows no signs of letting up. We live on a little hill. It’s never going to flood here. Our roof doesn’t leak. There’s no need for you to walk to that church building, just to write on some silly book that will never see the light of day. Where are you going to find a publisher here? Books are published in London, not Boston. You’re never returning to England as long as Charles sits the throne. Now, close the door.” Anna’s voice softened as she approached, slipped her arms around his chest, and laid her head on his back.

“We can’t afford to be burning candles in the daytime. You’ll wait until you can use the church’s candles. Is it such a chore to spend a rainy day with me?” That wasn’t a fair question, and she knew it. In their three years married, she’d never doubted that he loved her.

“John, I tire of old biddies looking at my belly, and seeing it as flat as it was when we married. Three years, John, and I haven’t conceived.” He turned to speak, but she placed two fingers to his lips. “No, you haven’t neglected me.” She stood on tiptoes and kissed him briefly.

“Nevertheless, husband, I’ve been thinking about something better to do on this eternally soggy day than listen to rain slapping our walls.” Other wives had warned her that sometimes men were slow to unravel a hint. A more direct approach . . . She reached up, unfolded his cravat, and pulled it from around his neck. Keeping herself pressed against him, she unbuttoned first the top button and then the second button of his stiff, gray shirt. His eyes were as round as saucers. She turned, leaning back against him.

“Would you help me with the buttons down the back of this dress? They’re always so hard for me to reach.” He stuttered; his hands fumbled at the buttons. “Do hurry!” He was nearly incapable of hurrying by the time she turned toward him again.

“But, Anna—It’s the middle of the day: broad daylight!”

“But, John, it’s ever so dark outside, and there’s no one in the house but us.” She threw her arms up around his neck and kissed him again: not just a simple brushing of the lips as earlier. If she’d chosen the slowest man in the entire Massachusetts Bay Colony, by that time, even he’d have lacked any doubt about her intentions for them.

Thus it was, as a hurricane died, a child was conceived. John Eliot, Jr., would be born in May 1636, instead of August 1636, confusing New England’s old-line history even further.


3

“John, they should let you speak. There should’ve been more voices raised that say that the Indians are the children of God as much as we are.”

“I’m afraid I’m not that important, Anna. I was only an assistant at First Church, and now that I’m at Roxbury, the powerful Boston men don’t want to listen to me. I may complete those final drafts about converting the natives someday, but right now, even those aren’t ready.” He smiled.

“Come, my dear. Bring the baby so that someday we may be able to tell him that he saw the first airship in the New World. We shall use that as an excuse, as we’re craning our own neck to get a good look. It’s hard to believe that men could rise so high.”

“I choose not to be impressed,” she said, sniffing. “They may rise high physically, but my husband is higher spiritually than any bunch of bloodthirsty war-pushers like Endecott. He got to talk to the men from that wondrous foreign place, and you didn’t.”

“How could I not love a woman who defends me so? Let’s just go look at the airship, and then be about our business. I can’t see how these visiting strangers could have the slightest effect on us.” She frowned, but agreed.


4

It was the commotion that attracted everyone, not the violence. Ships—many ships—had entered the springtime harbor before anyone realized that anything untoward was happening. The ships were launching boatloads of men as soon as their anchors dropped. Others were unloading directly onto the wharves. The men, forming into organized dockside groups, all bore bayoneted muskets. It was too late to fire the harbor’s defensive cannons.

An April breeze straightened a ship’s flag atop a mast. Three golden fleurs-de-lis on a blue field flapped in the wind. John Eliot stared at the newcomers from outside the Roxbury church door.

“French!” That meaning was uncertain. A pirate flag would be obvious. Charles I’s British flag would have identified enemies just as certainly as a French or Spanish flag. Dutch flags, Swedish flags, or Danish flags on a flotilla would have meant more mystery than danger. There was only one certainty: he needed to get to his family. He could hear the pop-pop-pop of distant musketry, but there was no way to identify its origin. His legs were running almost before he commanded them.

Anna had exited onto the hill’s crest with John, Jr., watching the spectacle. Her husband raced up to stand beside her, winded. Some militia were swarming out of their houses and shops, muskets in hand. The French troops were still milling around, organizing into companies. A frontal squad pointed muskets at the advancing militiamen. A second troop line had their weapons angled upward, ready to step forward if the front line couldn’t handle their task.

The French musketeers’ volley went off with a roar and a cloud of yellow smoke. One musketeer hadn’t been shouldering his weapon properly. He staggered backwards into the man behind him, whose angled musket went off prematurely.

Only God’s hand could be that quick, or Satan’s. There was a thump next to John. Anna looked suddenly startled. She turned and handed the baby to him. Then, she looked down at her own chest. A central red stain was spreading rapidly. Her mouth worked, but bright red blood came out instead of words. The spent musket ball from the startled musketeer had torn through a lung and the great vessel next to the heart. She held out a hand to her husband, but then folded to her knees; then to one hip, and then supine.

“No!” he screamed. “No!” The baby began to cry. His father was careful not to drop him as he knelt beside his wife. Her legs were still pawing at the ground, and there was an awful stench. Her halfopen eyes stared at the sky, never to see her husband or child again.

Neighbors began to arrive; one of the women lifted the crying baby from his arms. He still repeatedly choked out his denial. He held his dead wife’s head in his lap, careless of the blood; sobs shook him; tears flowed like a summer storm. Memory of another watery storm rose in his mind, and he wept all the more. More neighbors arrived: the women crying; the men talking quietly among themselves. Some left to return with someone’s shutter. Another man returned with a squat, brown bottle. They pressured John to drink some, and he couldn’t fight them. His strength was gone. A nondrinker, John quickly entered throat-burning, blurry unconsciousness. With one eye toward the advancing French, the neighbors agreed: unconsciousness was the preferred state at that moment.


5

John Eliot woke to a dim, painful world, filed with horrible memory. He raised his head. A voice spoke to him from the gloom.

“John, my son, I’m here for you.”

“Mmm . . . Mother Mumford?” His head hurt too badly for him to remember exactly why his motherin-law might be there.

“The baby’s asleep right now.” Then, he remembered. “Where—?”

“She’s at the undertakers. Your neighbors took her. The undertakers are very busy. The best we can hope for is a simple pine box, and a grave we dig ourselves. The French swine killed a dozen when they came ashore. Who knows how many more they killed across the bay? There was musket and cannon fire there.” He didn’t want to wake up; he didn’t want to think, but it was going to happen, whatever he preferred.

“Wait: What about your health, Mrs. Mumford? I know it hasn’t been good. How can you—?”

“You were always the politest young man who ever courted my daughter. I think it’s time that I

was ‘Abigail’ instead of ‘Mrs. Mumford.’ And, lad . . . If you bring up my health again while I’m caring for you and for my grandson, I’ll catch you on the side of the head with a skillet. Do you understand?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“As soon as the baby’s awake, we’ll go and make arrangements.”

The undertaker had indeed manufactured only a pine box, for which Eliot could afford to pay immediately. With a borrowed shovel, he dug a grave at the cemetery’s rear margin, tears sticking more dirt to his face than did sweat. Neighbors came by and offered to help, but he’d accept none. The stone would be just that: a stone, with the letter “E” carved by his own hand and the name “Anna Eliot” painted on. Someday he’d be able to afford more.

The farewell group was small. Anna’s father was himself gone; her brothers and sisters, even her sister Mary, were scattered, forbidden by the French to travel. The cemetery was dotted with other groups in black, weeping and tossing handfuls of dirt into amateur graves. Puritans were said to be cold and stiff, but the world’s evil had crushed them together. A surprising number of strangers had gathered with each mourning family. Some of the down-turned faces already showed anger against the indifferent papist invaders. Patrolling soldiers would allow only groups in black to walk as far as the graveyard.


6

A stranger to John Eliot left another mourning group and walked toward him. The distraught husband and father barely noticed him until he was an arm’s length away.

“Brother Eliot?”

“Eh? Yes?”

“I was aboard that Dutch ship with more brothers and sisters, the one that the French just seized in the harbor. I’d really meant to seek you at your house. Have you heard of the strange city that arrived in Germany? Grantville?”

“Yes, but what—?”

“Their library brought back some peculiar knowledge. Someone—I don’t know who—found a reference to you in that library. Whoever it was knew that there were Puritans in the Netherlands. You were there yourself, for a while, I think.” John shook his head. “It’s only one page. When it didn’t find you there, one of the elders gave it to me, knowing that I was leaving for Massachusetts. O brother, I never meant to deliver this at a time like this! Take its message as the voice of God. He wants to tell you something, even in this moment. I’m so sorry!” He fished inside his vest and pulled out a rumpled, folded paper. He handed it to John and departed, wiping tears from his face. The mourning widower didn’t remember to ask his name: “angels unaware.”


7

He tucked away the paper, later to be forgotten, laid on a table’s corner. At home, he held his son and crooned to him. He had to be careful not to hug him so hard that he hurt the baby. In his empty home, white-haired Abigail Mountford fed and changed the child. She prepared their food. If he ate it, he didn’t taste it.

The sun refused to stop shining, despite the French occupation. The invaders confiscated whatever supplies they wanted, robbing Puritan coin and food at gunpoint. Eliot was little affected; as a poor minister, he had very little that they wanted. They’d already robbed him of his most beloved treasure. His greatest future struggle would be to forgive and not to hate; to love and not to take vengeance. He could foresee no personal future except as a destroyed husk of a man. The sun still refused to stop shining.

His mother-in-law couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t burn candles in order to read inside his house. Candles were expensive, but it was more than that. He wouldn’t walk to the church building to write, though it was only two miles. The blood flow to his spirit had dried up like a dead tree’s sap. He wouldn’t make the long walk to write anything, because he couldn’t write anymore.

He could read, he supposed, and there were still good books in the town. Everything else was restricted by the occupiers. Outside, on his house’s north side, with the light from the sky, he could read. He began with a book he’d gotten in England. He read it, but he didn’t remember it. His eyes traced the letters, but the words refused to settle in his soul. He set it aside and went looking for some other printed word to stir himself. He considered that a hopeless task.

The rumpled paper still lay on the table. Mrs. Mumford, unsure of its significance, had left it there and cleaned around it. Her eyes were too far gone to read it herself. He picked it up and went outside, to rest against the small house’s wall. There were no clouds; there was no thunder; yet, lightning struck through to every limb’s tip as the words seared home.


8

“JOHN ELIOT: APOSTLE TO THE INDIANS.”

That mystery-sourced paper named him an apostle: “one who is sent.” He could no more have stopped reading than he could’ve stopped breathing. It told how he’d been Thomas Hooker’s follower, only to see him driven to Holland. He’d later left for the New World himself, to avoid persecution. He’d already experienced all that. It told how he’d married Anna Mountford in 1632. He knew that, too. Oh, how he knew that!

Then, that one paper page shredded his life apart as if he’d been thrown into a meat grinder. On the back, it spoke of the Great Colonial Hurricane of 1635. There’d been no Great Colonial Hurricane of 1635. It spoke of how his son John, Jr., was born in August 1636, when the baby asleep within his house had been born in May 1636. It didn’t speak of the French at all.

He sat there: clutching it; stretching it, as if to reveal more words; trying not to tear it. Words like a storm surge smashed into his life. Denying them had no more effect than holding up his hands would have had on a tidal wave. Somewhere, somewhen, they spoke of how he’d written the first book published in the New World: a Bible in the Wampanoag language. He also seemed to have written the first book authored in America: the first book to be banned by the government there.

The miraculous paper named his and Anna’s six children, listing their birth dates and some of their future. Somewhere, he’d raised two fine sons to the ministry. He’d married a daughter into one of the most important New England families. That was the cruelest literature: Anna would have no more children.

He read how he’d established town after town for Christian Indians, the Caughnawaga, around the Bay Colony. He read how he’d stood for Indian rights in Puritan courts. He read how he’d fought for Indian literacy: their right to read the Word; how he’d trained native preachers to go to their own people, the Praying Indians. At last, he read why his life had been cruelly twisted from its course.

The Puritans had been frightened by King Phillip’s War’s bloodshed, a war of which he’d never heard (and never would, it seemed). They’d treacherously turned on the Caughnawaga: imprisoning them in their villages; starving them; denying any chance to work their fields; destroying villages; dragging them away to be walled in; finally bribing them to go far away, so that their remnant wouldn’t forever embarrass their persecutors.

So that was it.

He had been sent, and he’d gone. Isaiah had said, “Here am I, Lord. Send me.” The John Eliot that he’d never meet had said the same, only to see his apostleship wasted and erased. He leaned against the clapboards with the tears washing his face, for his spiritual children, whom he’d never meet. God hadn’t given up on them or John, but there’d been a satanic price extracted for his new apostleship. A stone with the hand-carved letter “E” rose before his mind’s eye. The French had had to arrive, to shake him from his life in Boston and Roxbury. The works that he’d have once done wouldn’t have been enough. He shot to his feet.

“Not this time! Not this time, Lord!” he shouted to the sky.

He paced back and forth, too excited to read more, his feet itching to be on the road. Which road remained a matter of conjecture. He finally settled and began to read again.

He’d been helped in his first Wampanoag translations by a Pequot slave named Cockone of Long Island, captured by the Puritans during the Pequot War. What? There’d been no Pequot War. The USE ship and its miraculous airship had intervened, and an uneasy peace had held until the French arrived. Cockone must still be on Long Island! And he’d thought that the impossible American flying ship hadn’t touched his life!

“Abigail! Abigail!” He raced around to his front door. His mother-in-law met him inside, wiping flour from her hands. “Abigail, I know what I must do!”

“John, for the love of God! What’s gotten into you?”

“The Spirit of God’s gotten into me. I didn’t see any ‘cloven tongues of fire,’ but It came just the same. I must go to Long Island, and Junior will be going with me. He’ll be a great minister someday, himself.” Abigail’s face turned brick red; then white.

“You’ll do what again? Long Island?” She sat down on a chair—hard.

“I’m called by the Spirit. I must go to Long Island, to find a man named ‘Cockone.’ I’ve seen my future, and I’ve also seen Junior’s future. I have a work to do for God, and Junior will follow me. Cockone is part of that.”


9

It couldn’t be said that Abigail didn’t try to argue him out of his journey. She made him sit in her kitchen. Was his mind, perhaps, disarrayed by Anna’s death? Could an evil spirit, not from God, be launching him in the wrong direction? Might he not be killed by the dangerous Indians along his path or by those on Long Island? Might he or the baby not be struck by disease on such a hard journey among strangers? Might he not starve, without a congregation to support him?

He listened politely, because he loved her. He embraced her and patted her back, but he made it absolutely clear that he and Junior were going. In Abigail’s mind, John’s journey instantly became “our” journey. Then, it became his turn to argue. That had just as much effect for turning the elderly woman from their path as her arguments had had diverting him. He started to use the word “health,” but her hand closed instantly on a skillet handle. He stopped and tried to work around the problem indirectly; he made no headway.

“We’ll leave as soon as possible, in the midst of a week. I won’t tell the congregation Sunday. With so many ears listening, the word might reach the French. I don’t want us as dead as the Pilgrims. The French don’t want another valuable slave—all right: two more valuable slaves—leaving Massachusetts. I know that some fled overland to the Connecticut Valley when the French came. We’ll find help there, and that’ll put us that much closer to Long Island.” Abigail ignored him and went on packing, only necessary things.

The next day, she disappeared back to her own house, taking the baby with her. John would rather have left that day, but she delayed too long. They’d leave the next morning.

“Exactly where were you?”

“Well, there were certain things that I valued. It’s not as if I’d be coming back for them, and I don’t want the French to have them. So, I gathered them, and Junior and I walked around to visit the members of your congregation.”

“My—”

“Hush! What do I need with a silver tea set, and what do they need with money that the French will steal from them anyway? You’re a man full of spirit; on fire with the Spirit; with no more practicality than a baby bird. We’ll need money, and you had very little. If an Italian shawl or a set of Dutch carving knives will give us the coin with which to eat later, what good are those things to me? My legs are too old, and the time is too short for me to get rid of everything, but perhaps now we’ll have enough money to eat on. I kept his grandfather’s ring for Junior to have someday. He couldn’t wear it anyway because of its showiness. I kept my ruby broach for the same reason. I know that it will— Never mind.

“I sent word by a boy, whom the French would never think to stop, to Anna’s brothers and sisters. I hope that Mary can make it to our houses and clear them of everything valuable before the French thieves get their hands on them.” He didn’t dare argue with the fire in her eye. The partial cataract in one gave her a sinister look.


10

When he saw the weight that they’d carry, John himself added another day. He created a handcart: used wheels, a broken boat body, and some oars—beneath a tarp, which they’d also need. They rolled out an hour before sundown Friday, generally toward the Roxbury church. In the twilight, they kept on past the meetinghouse, on the roads southwest, until the track began to play out. The cart allowed them to carry blankets and cooking gear; they wouldn’t be too uncomfortable.

The following morning, they still found partial roads. A few dozen Puritans had fled the French incursion, fearful for their future. Some had cleared a trail. Open, it wasn’t; better than underbrush, it was. John wouldn’t let Abigail near the cart handles, no matter how tough the going. He could tell that simply marching, sometimes holding Junior’s toddler hand, was exhausting her. She insisted on cooking for her men. They’d have to travel the next day, Sabbath or not. They were more than thirty miles from home when they met the Indians.

John suspected that they were Mohicans. Two men simply stepped out of the brush beside the trail and stared at them. He raised his hand in a friendly gesture; he had neither pistol nor musket. They only crossed their arms and continued to stare. Though each had a knife and a tomahawk slung at his belt, neither was painted. A woman in a buckskin dress also stepped from the trees to watch. Two older children joined her, and another pair of dark eyes peered from among the trunks. John rolled the handcart along, sweating from more than the heat. Abigail made sure that all watching eyes saw baby Junior.

They took no more precautions that night than any other night. If Indians had wanted to kill them, they’d have been dead already. Abigail thought John unnaturally confident that God would protect them, especially from Indians, but there was precious little either could do about the danger.

Toward midday of the sixth day, Abigail collapsed. As much as she wanted to walk independently, she couldn’t. As much as John didn’t want to pull her extra weight, there wasn’t much choice there, either.

Near midmorning on the seventh day, one of the Mohican men, whom they’d previously passed, stepped from the forest. By gesture, he indicated that he’d manage an oar shaft. He pulled half the load all day, disappearing at twilight. John was able to feed the baby some thin corn mush and molasses, but he ate little himself. Abigail could eat nothing at all.

An hour into the eighth day, they saw the first farm on Newtowne’s outskirts. When the crude fort rolled into sight, Abigail kissed the baby. She hugged John’s neck and kissed him on the cheek, without speaking. She died that afternoon, living the Grandmother’s Code to the last.


11

He’d buried Abigail in the Newtowne cemetery. That was already too full; frontier life wasn’t easy. He’d marked her simple stone with an “E” for “Eliot,” because of what she’d been to his family, and an “M” for her own family. Someday, Junior would return and mark the grave properly.

And then . . . and then . . . nothing.

The fort was filled with activity, people cycling through continually: Puritans, Dutch, and natives from Algonquian tribes. Some white men had so adapted to Indian ways that they were hard to distinguish from tribesmen. Some natives had spent so much time around white men (or perhaps around white man’s liquor) that they, too, had lost tribal identity. In such a menagerie, it should have been easy for John to find a way to Long Island. It was only a few miles down the river and ten miles across a quiet bay.

Carrying Junior on one hip, he asked anyone he thought might speak English. None seemed interested. He suspected that the Pequot, known for their fierceness, were currently an unknown quantity. He heard that the Pequot had driven every other tribe from Long Island, making it a Pequot (and only Pequot) hunting ground. If they didn’t like someone disturbing them—native or white—that person might reach Long Island, and simply disappear. John was determined to carry his son with him, and none wanted to be responsible for a child’s death at cruel hands. The French appearance had made the Pequot uneasy: they were dangerous when uneasy.

John had camped outside the fort, near a grove where he could find firewood. On some days, certain farm women baked bread; others kept milk cows. Junior was thriving on mush, with occasional bread and milk, toddling here and there. After his son was bedded down one night, a scarred Indian stepped into his firelight.

“Tell me, white man, why you want go across the water.”

John was startled to hear English. “Well, I . . . I won’t lie to you. I must find a Pequot named Cockone.” The Indian grunted. “I know this man, whose name you say wrong. Why must you find him?”

There was no point dissembling. “The Great Spirit has called me to find him. We have a great work that should be done together: the two of us. I need someone to help me find him, and to help me speak to him.” Again, the native grunted. He crouched beside the fire.

“I can take you to him, but you will pay me first. I do not want white man’s money. It too easy to cheat using money that only white men understand.”

“Very well. What do you want?”

“I want your cart. There is old nokomis, a grandmother to whom I owe a debt. She grows feeble and cannot drag wood. With your cart, she can haul wood from far away. Some longhouse will give her a shelf on which to sleep and food to eat, so that they may use her cart. That will get you to Cockone.”

“And to speak to Cockone . . . ?”

“More.”

“Have you seen something that you want?” John suspected that the Indian had been watching him continually.

“I see nothing that I want, but I want something. Your own journey gear . . . you will need again. We take all in my canoe. It must be something else, something special.”

“I have no— Wait.” He knew exactly where he’d stored Junior’s inherited ring. With it . . . 

“I will give you this. It is very valuable to both white men and to your people.” He held up the ruby broach. (How had Abigail known? Was it something about her approaching death? He shook his head.) The Indian examined it closely, smiling to himself.

“Return it, please. It shall be yours when you have assisted me in speaking to Cockone for three days. That man and I will speak further, but at three days you will have earned your payment.” The Indian handed it back with obvious reluctance.

“I am Black Turtle. Be at the river tomorrow when the sun is one hand above the horizon. Have your things and your son ready to travel in canoe. Have your cart ready to be empty. I am Mohican. I heard of you, from my tribe. They like me not, but some of them will speak to me. They told me of your determination, but they cannot tell me of your honesty. Do not cheat me, or you will never return from across water.” He unfolded from his crouch. Like a shadow, he was gone.


12

John packed everything, trying not to bump or clank and wake Junior. He didn’t want to discard Abigail’s traveling clothes. There wasn’t time to find a proper recipient among the fort’s women. Then he remembered that Black Turtle was going to transfer the cart to an old woman. She might accept another older woman’s clothing.

He slept poorly that night. With the dawn, he approached the river, after feeding Junior. Black Turtle was already there, accompanied by a bent, white-haired woman. John pulled his pack from the cart and lifted the baby down. The toothless woman exclaimed over his son. The Grandmother’s Code crossed every boundary.

“Tell her, Black Turtle, that I have given her a clothing gift in the cart because of my son.” The Mohican look over the clothing, frowned, and shook his head.

“You have made this nokomis a rich woman. The longhouses will fight to have her stay with any one of them.” He snorted and laughed to himself. “Together we load your gear. As I tie it down, be prepared to sit in front of canoe. I will be in back, ready to paddle. Push us off, and jump in immediately with your son. You would be in my way if you try to paddle.”

Eventually, John sat (wet) in the canoe’s prow, rocking (dry) Junior. The trio headed downriver.


13

A stick two-and-a-half feet long stuck up from the canoe’s prow, with a half dozen white bead strings hanging from it, easily visible. Black Turtle pushed the canoe to the river’s center, where the current was strongest, making only an occasional strike with his paddle. The Connecticut would grow wider as they approached the ocean.

An hour into the journey, Junior woke up. John fed him mashed berries, cold mush, and molasses. After John had washed out a dirty diaper and swaddled him in a dry cloth, he seemed perfectly happy to watch the scenery pass, standing between his father’s legs or dozing with the canoe’s rocking.

There was some river traffic, mostly canoes. They saw a few flat-bottomed boats being poled near the bank. Once they had to move aside for a schooner headed upstream; twice they passed anchored ships. Every native canoe tended to veer toward their canoe. Sharp eyes would note a man holding a baby and a native without war paint. They also looked carefully at the white strings hung at the bow.

It was thirty or forty miles down the Connecticut to the ocean. Black Turtle moved closer to the bank; he worked harder when the tide changed against them. The native wasn’t one for conversation. It was a day of new scenes for John and Junior, but not new information.

They camped that night on a sandbank close to the river’s mouth. Black Turtle, who carried no cooking gear, appreciated the frying pan that John had brought. He caught two fish, and they ate well, with a little bear grease to slick the pan. John tried a pinch of cooked fish on Junior, and the boy ate happily. Mashed thoroughly, no fish’s bones reached his son’s mouth.

With the dawn, from a tall dune, they could see a low-lying point across the water. When the tide turned, the river gave them a shove out to sea. They set out as before, with everything tied down thoroughly. Black Turtle got no relief from paddling, but the distance was shorter. As they approached the sandy point, the Mohican bore off to the right.

“No villages there. Too flat. Storms hit too hard there. Cockone lives down the coast.”

“Black Turtle, what are these white strings that hang here in front of me? I have seen many look at them.”

“White wampum. We come in peace, like traders.”

“Oh. Why didn’t we stop at Fort Sovereignty?”

“Not safe. I have no friends there.” Two hours later, they saw a substantial village, with two dozen canoes pulled up on the strand.

“Cockone’s village.” The Mohican paddled directly in.

Warriors hurried down to the water, weapons in hand, but the defense was only half-hearted. One canoe was unlikely to be a war party. Two men and a baby certainly weren’t. The white wampum of negotiation hung prominently at the canoe’s prow.

“Come,” Black Turtle called. “We will see chief. Then, we speak with Cockone.”


14

An important-looking man came out to talk to Black Turtle, frowning. The Mohican was probably seldom greeted by smiles anywhere. He spoke at length and gestured, pointing both toward John and toward the village. He gave the chief one white wampum string. The chief finally agreed to whatever Black Turtle had requested. The Pequot turned away with a dismissive gesture. John believed that what the chief had agreed to was indifference. If his man didn’t want to talk to two interlopers, he didn’t have to.

As soon as the warriors had let the pair ascend the beach, the village children and dogs began noisily circling, some barking and some yelling. As soon as the chief released them into the village, a dozen running children began orbiting them. The dogs didn’t try to get close, but they did bark continually. The commotion couldn’t help but attract Cockone. He stepped from his longhouse, an impressive figure even without war regalia.

Black Turtle spoke to him at length, obviously requesting an interview, inside (away from children and dogs). Junior had been so entertained that he hadn’t fussed at all. Once inside the dark interior, the toddler began to cry. Cockone shook his head lightly and clapped his hands. A woman came from the other end of the longhouse and held out her hands to take Junior. The chief spoke kindly to John, and Black Turtle translated.

“He says that this is first wife. She has had many children. She will care for your son with great tenderness. He is probably only hungry.” It was a test, and John knew it. If he was to become the apostle to the Indians, he couldn’t dodge becoming close to them, but this was his son! His hands were almost knotted with tension as he passed the baby to Cockone’s wife.

The Pequot warrior gestured them toward an open area near the longhouse’s center. He crouched on one side of a barely smoking fire; they would take the other side. He spoke briefly. Black Turtle translated.

“He says for you to begin. Tell him what you came to say.” John cleared his throat. Sweat popped from every pore. If the internal prayer he uttered had been spoken aloud, it would have blown away longhouse walls with its intensity.

“I bring you the words of the Great Spirit, spoken by white man’s letters on this piece of paper.” Cockone’s eyebrows rose until a person could see the whites of his eyes. “Do you remember when the great flying thing appeared in the sky? This paper was created by the same men who built the great flying thing. They come from a place of events that might have been. Those events were not always for the good. It is clear: they have come to this place to change things, so that they will no longer be as things might have been.” Black Turtle had to speak for more than a minute. Some backand-forth was required before the warrior agreed that he understood.

“The Great Spirit sent this paper to me, to tell me of things that might have been in my own life. Those things were not perfect: not as I wished. He has told me to try again, to make them as they should be. I will tell you what this paper says about my own life: how it is right; how it is wrong.” He read the title. “It says that I am to be sent as a messenger to those who are not white men. I knew nothing of this. This is about things that were to happen when I was older. Until a few days ago, I did not know that I would be this messenger.” He read aloud then about his past life and marriage.

“This is all the truth. The same events happened in this world as happened in the world that only might have been.”

Sometimes when he preached, John Eliot felt the Spirit of God on himself: signs in his own body; the rapt attention of his audience to his words. Here, he had an audience of one, but he could feel the Spirit falling on him like a cloak and see the fascination in the Pequot’s eyes.

“I brought my son to your longhouse, so that you might see him. The other side of the paper told about a great storm that happened months ago. You and I had our eyes open. There was no such great storm. Already, something has changed. The paper says that my son was born at the hottest part of summer. It is not true: a change has happened. My son was born in the spring, not long after the ice broke up. The strangers who came in the great flying thing have begun to change the world. They are not the only ones who can change it!” He rose and paced.

“Those things were nothing to me. The paper named the year that I was married. It was truth. The paper told of the six children my wife would bear. It was a lie! The day the French came, a French musket killed my wife. She had the one son, but she will have no more.” He stopped, flustered, as Black Turtle translated.

“This paper tells me all the great things I will do: great things that I have not done yet. The Evil One speaks to me and says, ‘See. This message lies. Your wife lies dead and will bear no more children. You cannot do these great things, because they are certain to be lies, also.’ I will listen to the Great Spirit instead! He says to me, ‘Go,’ and I must go. There are many things to be done at the Great Spirit’s command, first by me and later by my son. When they were done the first time, I did not do them alone. I had the help of a great Pequot. His name and his story are on this paper also.” Cockone blinked several times before he spoke.

“Who is this warrior of wonder among the Pequot?”

John Eliot stood to his full height. “His name is Cockone!” His eyes rolled up into his head, and the preacher fainted.


15

John Eliot woke from sleep on a Pequot longhouse’s shelf, wrapped in a deerskin. Black Turtle was close at hand, sitting on another shelf.

“I told them what the Mohicans told me. You had fled many days from your enemies with your child and your grandmother. You pulled a heavy load all day, every day, caring for those you love. At the last, you were carrying it all, and the Mohicans could not stand to watch you. They helped, but you never stopped. I know that you have eaten almost nothing, as you buried your grandmother. You made sure that your child had food in his belly. One small fish? Pah! None were surprised when you fell under the spirit-load that you had been given. Tonight you will speak again to Cockone and the elders of the Pequot. Now, you must eat something, or your strength will fail you again.” He called something in the Pequot dialect.

A young woman was there immediately with a bark bowl of corn, bean and squash stew, with bits of wild turkey in it. Though he had only his fingers to use, he ate it all. She brought more food later in the day.

He meditated and prayed throughout the day. Cockone’s wife brought Junior, to show that all was well, and then departed again. That night, he was summoned to a council in the chief’s longhouse.

“They wish you to tell them about the great deeds that the Great Spirit has set before you.”

“I am ready. I will tell them about the great things that I might have done. About things that failed—things that I will never do now. I will tell them about the great things that I plan in this life.

“In my life that never was, that never will be, others helped me to translate the Word of the Great Spirit and His Son into language that you could understand. It will not be the same now. I held too tightly to my own language and left it to others to learn yours. In this life, I will learn to speak as you speak. As quickly as I learn, I will reveal the words of the Great Spirit. I will make a letter Book in your language of those words and teach you to read it.

“In that spirit life, I helped build villages for people like you who came to believe in the Great Spirit and His Son. I will not do that again! In that life, my own white men destroyed believers like you. This time I will build no villages. I will convert villages so that good people of the Great Spirit live among their own. In that life, I taught many like you to become prophets, to speak the words of the Great Spirit and His Son. I will do that again, with all my heart.” His palm stumped his chest.

“In that life that never was, I defended your people against the white people who would use words to rob you. At the last, I failed. I will not fail you in this life!” The Pequot seemed stunned by what they’d heard. The chief rose and spoke; Black Turtle translated.

“They would speak among themselves of the things that you have told them. What of the warrior Cockone? What do you say of him?”

“When they have talked among themselves, tomorrow night I will speak to Cockone and tell him what the magic paper said of his life.”


16

With the third night, Eliot discovered that so many wanted to hear him that they once again had to gather in the chief’s longhouse.

“I have told you before how the strangers in the great flying thing came to change how things would have been. This paper of mistakes tells me about the warrior Cockone. It tells me how he was a slave.” The longhouse erupted in noise. Cockone jumped to his feet.

“I am no slave!” He slammed his fist against his chest. John had to wait for the noise to die down. “No, you are no slave in the here and now. In that other time that might have been, you were cap-

tured during the Pequot War and made a slave to the white men. You learned to speak English. Do not be astounded. There was no Pequot War! The men from the great flying thing stopped the war before it could happen. Hundreds of the Pequot were supposed to die. Cockone was supposed to be captured. Do you not see? The men from this other time have come to change the things that went wrong. They do not even know their own destiny.

“In that different time, you became my friend. You helped me with the words I needed in your language, to bring the Great Spirit’s Word to your people. Even as a slave, you became a great leader of those who believe in the Father and the Son. This paper told me of you. It gave me your name. I am sent by the Great Spirit to find you, that you might help me to set things right for your people. You know what I plan. I want you to help me. I want you to walk my path with me again.” John Eliot folded his arms. He would say no more. His three days of speech were ended. He let Black Turtle lead him back to Cockone’s longhouse.


17

When he awoke the next morning, Black Turtle was still present. “I thought—” The Mohican held up his hand.

“You are a man too interesting to leave. I will stay until you are interesting no longer.”

“Cockone . . . ?”

“He has built himself a medicine lodge, a midewigaan. He will let it purify him until he has an answer.” There was a cry from the village edge and the distant sound of running feet. “Ho! I think that Cockone has his answer. Come.” They hurried toward the ocean’s margin with the rest of the village. Steam was still trailing from the ruptured midewigaan. Cockone was emerging, dripping, from the ocean water. He stood tall and strode straight to John Eliot. He embraced the Puritan preacher. He spoke, and Black Turtle was eager to translate.

“He says, ‘I will walk this path again!’”


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