I expected Rachael to wed in a church at least or have a ballroom prepared for dancing. Instead, they went inside a house, to a man who put on his head a ratted old wig, and when he asked them if they intended to marry, Rachael and Reverend Johansen said, “Yes.” They signed their names to a paper. It was the dullest wedding I could imagine. Not a note of music or a single sweet. I wondered how the parson came to be burdened with the Haskens’ oldest daughter, but I saw no other single girl whose level of hopeless ugliness might make her willing to marry an old, poor parson. I felt sorrow for him, waking up next to a hag every morning.
Later, Reverend and the new Mistress Reverend sat before the fire talking of plans for their new home, the building of a meetinghouse, a garden, and when we would leave on the venture. I heard him say that he “would abstain from taking her to wife until it can be under our own roof.” Both Master and Mistress nodded as if this made sense to them.
When word came that all was ready for the move, it took two days to get everything loaded into the wagon. As we walked away, the house looked as if robbers had ransacked it. Cupboards stood ajar, a rag lay there and a broken crock here. Fluttering like leaves before a hurricane, we set out on the muddy, rutted road that led away from the town. Family after family joined us on the road, with carts pulled by horse, ox, dog, or cow. One man hitched himself to a wagon and pulled it with his own legs. His wife and two children walked.
We walked for what seemed like hours with no sound but the complaints of the animals and the creak of the wheels. Birds overhead made strange calls. A rabbit darted from the brush and someone’s dog chased it. Dark woods, so thick it made a roof over our heads, closed in upon us. In Jamaica, I was never without several strong slaves breaking out the forest for us to pass, my family never walking, always riding in a coach.
This was a land of cold, just as Ma used to tell in stories of Scotland and England. Was this also a place of brownies and trolls and the most terrible of all, fairies? Did duppies watch us? The forest seemed alive with strange sounds in dark misty dells just out of sight. I tried to remember the charm Patey and I had sung. I could not remember it. “Gumboo, gumboo,” I whispered, tapping one or the other of the goats with each word. I craned my neck at every turn to see Patey somewhere ahead.
Suddenly as a summer rain, a flutter of gasps and soft cries rose from our company. I looked toward the trees and the glade through which we had just passed seemed alive with movement. I thought it was rain, or wind, or a dozen wolves come for us. The bushes parted and the forms of men appeared, men with long black hair such as I had never seen, with faces painted red as a barn door. Some of them wore no shirts but breeches and vestments and leggings with wrappings on their feet. Bowmen all, they raised arrows toward us and we struggled keeping the animals straightened and still. The men were marvelous to look upon. The goats wandered as I stopped.
Reverend Johansen raised his hands and said, “Ho, brethren! Hello?” None of the men answered. He spoke again, first to us on the road, “Just some of God’s children we call Indians. I will trust that we will pass safely. Pray, brethren.”
“Indians,” whispered Birgitta.
To the Indians, he spoke in his sermonizing voice. “We are pilgrims. We go to a new settlement west of here. I have already spoken with your chief men. We are no enemies of the Red Man. He assured us we may pass.” The strangers spoke to one another in whispers. Reverend Johansen said a couple of the words he knew in Indian tongue. One of the Indians shouted at us. Running up and down the line of us, he waved his arm and menaced us with words.
“Let us move forward, friends,” Reverend Johansen said. “Move on, making no alarm. Show them we are just travelers.” The party started to move. The Indians stepped back, and with no more than the flutter of a leaf, they disappeared into the woods. The rest of that day we kept quiet and watchful.
“Birgitta? What is the name of the place where we go?”
“New Town.”
A town? My heart lifted. “Where does it lie?”
“By Collins Pond.”
“Shall I be able to send a letter from there?”
“Are you some queen of England to be sending letters about?”
I saw Patience walking far in front, but I could not leave the goats to go run ahead and find her. The strange sounds of the forest made me think I knew things that could not be known by mortals. We walked until the sun cast long shadows from the trees, dipping below them, and all was shadow and more shadow. We slept on the road itself that night. I sank where Mistress pointed, amidst the goats. Goats are naught but bones and bleating, and their hair was not warm nor their bodies soft. Of course, there was the smell, too, bitter as overripe vinegar, intrusive as bile.