The woods were thick, but there were streams to cross and meadows. Somewhere over there were the Indians who had passed us and no doubt Bauer and his men. Yet it must somehow be done.
I went to where Diana picked huckleberries. “Know you of any settlement on the great bay south of Cape Ann? It might be easier to reach.”
“My father has a friend at a place they call Shawmut. He is the Reverend Blaxton. He lives alone there, I think, with one servant.”
“Is he the only one?”
“There is another at Winnesimmet. Samuel Maverick has a fortified house there, a place with a palisade and several guns mounted.”
“A good man?”
“Yes, he is. A very kind, genial man, but he has great physical strength, and he is said to be absolutely fearless.”
“He knows you?”
She hesitated. “He may remember me. My father helped with the raising of some of the beams of Maverick’s house, but I met him but once when I was a little girl.”
“It is good. We will try for his place.”
“We would be safe there if he would take us in, for they would fear him. Or be wary of him, at least. He is a man of reputation, well known in the colony and in England, and I think even Max Bauer would hesitate to face him.”
We picked berries a little longer. A thought came to me. “He is a married man?”
“He is. He married the widow of David Thomson, a very good woman. I have spoken to her.”
Henry came up from the edge of the stream. He had six good salmon and a large pickerel. “I will fix them,” he said. “It is better to eat them and carry the weight inside than out.”
We were eating the fish when Yance returned. He had gone off suddenly into the woods, and he squatted beside me when he got back, taking a piece of the fish, baked in the coals. “Found a trace … old one. Runs off south by east.”
“A likely way?”
“Aye. There be deadfalls here an’ yon, but we could make two, three miles … maybe more.”
We moved out at dusk, taking the dim trace, and once we had gone into it, I left Yance to lead and fell back. At the campsite I studied it with what light was left; then I began carefully cutting out the tracks of two people.
There was no way to choose whose tracks, so I simply took those tracks of which there were fewest. Carrie had moved around mighty little, so with a little brushing here and there and then a sifting of dust and broken leaves, letting the slight breath of air dictate where it fell, I left behind a camp that showed only three people: Diana, Henry, and myself.
A really fine tracker, if he took the time, could read the true story, but they were going to be moving fast, and I wanted to mislead them. They had lost the trail, I was sure of that. Now they would find it again, but of only three people. Where were the other two? Or where was the other one, Carrie, and who was the stranger in moccasins, which was I.
At the entrance to the trace and for some way along it, I erased all sign of travel, scattering a few twigs, some bits of bark. Then I started running, a long, easy stride to overtake them, but it was full dark before I did, and when I felt I was close to where they might be, I slowed my pace to come upon them quietly. They had covered almost two miles and had stopped briefly near a small stream.
We moved on into the night, pausing frequently so that the girls might not tire too soon. At one stop I sat beside Diana.
“I liked your father,” I said.
She turned her face toward me. I could see the faint whiteness of it in the shadowed place. “He is a good man. I do not think shaped for this life, nor this country.”
“To make a country we need all kinds. He is a thoughtful man, and such are needed. He reads, he thinks. Too many of us are so busied with living that we do not.”
I gestured about us. “A man must think, but he has not enough to nudge his thinking. From morn till night we are busy with finding game, hunting food, cutting fuel, shaping wood for houses. Ours is too busy a world, and there is no time for considering.”
“I know … even father. There are days when he has not the time to touch a book. There is no market where one can go and buy what is needed. It must be hunted, gathered, or made with the hands.”
“And at night,” I added, “a man is too tired. I fall asleep over my books, but we must read, not only for what we read but for what it makes us think. Shaping a country is not all done with the hands but with the mind as well.”
We were silent, and she dipped water from the stream and drank, then again.
“How will it be,” I asked, “when you return?”
She was quiet for a minute, and then she said, “It will be the same, I think. Perhaps worse. If it were not for my father, I would walk away one day and never look back.”
“Why don’t you …” I caught myself, not wishing her to misunderstand, “and your father come south to Shooting Creek? You would like it there, I believe, and there is a place. One of our farmers was killed by Indians, and his cabin is a strong one. It is empty.”
“Thank you.”
She gave no sign that she thought it a good suggestion or not, so I said nothing further. After a moment we started on, walking steadily into the night. Yance carried Carrie for more than a mile, and we stopped again.
Henry was impatient. “It is foolish. We cannot escape. They will surely find us.”
“Would you leave them?” I asked.
He threw me a disdainful glance. “Of course not, but we will all be taken.” He paused a minute. “You do not know them. They are vicious, and they are cruel.”
“Whose slave were you?”
“A ship’s captain. He has been much along this coast, and he has made swift attacks on Indian villages and carried some of them off for slaves. I was his servant.”
He turned his head toward me. “To lie in the hold of a ship was not good, and there was no chance for escape. So I let them hear me speaking English and telling another slave that I was once servant to an Englishman. It was not true, but it worked as I hoped it would, and the captain sent for me. I became his servant and henceforth was upon deck. Then I taught him to trust me.”
“And how did you get ashore?”
“Lashan needed a man, and there was no other, so for this one time they left me ashore to help him. It was what I had been waiting for.”
“If we get through this, you will return to Africa?”
He was silent, thinking about it. “I know not,” he grumbled. “I have seen much since then. Perhaps there is a better life here.”
“There are slaves here, too.”
“There are slaves everywhere. Many are slaves, one way or another, who do not realize they are, but I shall not be a slave. There is opportunity here even among white men.”
“You are not worried about your color being a handicap?”
“Worried, no. In some ways it will work against me, and in others it will work for me. You wonder why I speak English as I do? I learned it from an Englishman who was a slave in my country. He was captured when a party came ashore from a ship. He began as the lowest of slaves, but it was discovered that he knew something of treating illnesses, although he was not a medical man. Then he became my teacher, also. Soon he was my father’s adviser and confidant. When my father died, he returned to his country and returned with gold and diamonds my father had given him.
“He stood upon the shore with me before his ship sailed, and he said to me what I should remember, that any man can be a slave, and a few men, if they will it, can become kings. He put his hand upon my shoulder and told me that in the world were two kinds of people, those who wish and those who will, and the world and its goods will always belong to those who will.
” ‘When I came to your land, I was a slave, but I shouldered whatever burden was given me. I looked for other burdens, and for those who will shoulder a burden there will always be many burdens to carry. Finally I helped your father, whose burdens were growning too heavy for him, and your father rewarded me, first with freedom and second with wealth.'”