One morning as I started in song, the Indian man I walked beside touched my cheek with his finger. “Ah-shon, be quiet,” he said. The whole lot of them, every Indian, grew quiet. They pushed us into the brush. I was not far from Rachael and I heard her complain to the man who guarded her. He clapped his hand upon her mouth and threw her down, forcing his whole body upon her so that she could not move. Down our path came Indians, dressed differently from these, their faces painted in ferocious colors. Their hair was wildly set and I could imagine they had just left their homes for some errand, be it hunting or war, whereas our captors looked as weary and footsore as their prisoners. We waited a long time. Finally we began our walk again.
When we stopped to rest, Rachael fell against a tree and wept. Reverend Johansen tried to comfort her. She called out more. Even Patience went to her and tried to quiet her. I watched the Indians as they circled her. I feared lest they do away with her just for being noisesome. I was not so simple as to not understand that the Indians were hiding from the other group that passed. They did not want to fight them. I could only hope Reverend Johansen could prevail upon her to quiet down. She turned on him, saying, “You did nothing to save me from being so ill-used by a heathen.”
“I prayed mightily,” he said, as if her having survived to complain were proof that it had had its intended effect. “We were all in mortal danger. Your staying quiet was to save all our lives. As it might be even at this moment.”
“You are no fit husband who will not take up arms and defend his wife. If you had fought them we would not be here, forced to go mile after mile—”
“Wife, I cannot insist with more earnest appeal than I do at this moment that you stop speaking at all, or if you must, keep your voice down so that we are not set upon by other savages. If I had fought them we would not be here; we would both be dead.”
She fumed, making a face so like her mother’s I nearly laughed out loud. Rachael sneered and said, “I am so ashamed to call you husband. You worthless, feeble, wimbly old man. Coward.” Rachael spat.
Reverend Johansen picked up a loose branch lying beside the path, raising it over his head. The Indians leaped forward to hack him down, until he brought it down upon Rachael’s back as she turned from him. He laid her five whacks, the same as Birgitta used to lay upon me. “You will mind your vow of obedience and duty to me and to God, and you will bear in mind at this time that you live at the will of these strangers among us. You will behave as a minister’s wife, sober, humble, and quiet. Your villainy could bring the murder of every soul here, and I will not idly have you throw away these lives.”
The Indians looked from one to another. They lowered their hatchets and knives. One of them took the branch from the reverend and swung it again, giving Rachael another stroke of it, as if testing to see that the beating was real. She whimpered and hid her face. The Indian man nodded and handed Reverend Johansen the stick again. He pointed to Rachael, to the reverend, and to the stick. The one who had spoken the English words before raised his hands as he had done. “This land not our land. If Cayuga find on land, many die. You not fight, you not die. Three more suns. Not Cayuga land. Three suns. Understand?”
I was not sure I understood, but it seemed enough that Rachael’s outburst had ended without bloodshed. What choice did we have whether it were three more days or a hundred and three?
For two more days, we traversed dense woods that slowed everyone, even the warriors. The food had grown scarce and many of them carried children and women upon their backs. At the top of the hill we had seen a city by a river. My own heart jumped with hope that here was freedom, at last. I would post a message to Ma. My legs wanted to run toward the beautiful city.
The third day after Rachael’s beating, our walking seemed more treacherous than the many days before it. At least to the Indians, there seemed to be great reason for care and quiet, for we were headed for the city yet trying to stay hidden in the woods, moving in small clusters as if we were sheep. They carried no one, and even my friend who’d carried me or my iron kettle made me walk and carry it again so that my fingers ached. At long last we came to a great stone wall of a regal building, larger than any I had ever seen. I wondered if it might be a governor’s palace. The Indians sent a messenger to the door, but it was not the man who spoke English. That, I found puzzling. These were not Indian buildings, I was sure, yet if he spoke no English he would be useless among these people of royal appointment. He went in. He returned. He spoke to the other Indians.