When a witch is young: A Historical Novel

LE ROI EST MORT.

THE first, the last—the only King the Americans ever had, was dead. It was the 13th day of August, in the year 1676. The human emotions of the Puritan people of Massachusetts tugged at the shackles of a long repression and broke them asunder, in the seemly town of Plymouth. King Philip, the mighty Sachem of the Wampanoag Indians, had been slain. His warriors were scattered and slaughtered. His war was ended.

Through the streets of Plymouth poured a vast throng of people. Men, women and children, they ran and walked, surrounding a buff-colored army that filled the thoroughfares like a turgid flood. This was the regiment which Captain Benjamin Church had led to the final camp of King Philip, in the swamps at Mt. Hope and Pocasset, where the last scene in the sanguinary drama had been enacted.

Here was a troop of sixty horse, with officers. They were well mounted, caparisoned with glittering back, breast and headpiece, and armed with clanking sword, shouldered carbine, and great pistols, that flopped at the waist. Behind them were foot-soldiers, brown Puritans—stern, mirth-denying, lusty at fighting. Some of these bore no weapon other than a pike. Another frequently had upon him sword, pistol and carbine. Above the heads of these men on foot waved a thin forest of pike-staves, on the tips of which bright steel threw back the dazzling rays of the sun. There was clatter of scabbards on the pavement, thud and thud of hoofs and feet in the roadway, and above all, shouts of men and gabble of children.

There were hordes on either side of this human flood, pushing and crowding to gain the front of the column, while a similar aggregation hung back upon the flank of the regiment, hooting, craning necks and racing to keep pace with the steady, long strides of the soldiers. This division of interest was caused by the two counter attractions of the pageant. Thus at the front, a red Indian was leading the march with a wild, half-dancing step, while he contorted his body weirdly for the purpose of displaying to all beholders the ghastly proof of victory—the head of the great King Philip. This Indian ally might have stood for the mockery of a drum-major, heading a march of doom.

The spectators, racing, crowding, following, took a crazed delight in beholding this gory head. Love, anger, joy, the daily emotions of man, were habitually so repressed by these serious people that now it seemed as if they reveled as in an orgie of shuddering and gasping, to give vent to their pent-up natures. They laughed, they skipped on nimble feet, they sang praises. The young men and women snatched the occasion, with its looseness of deportment, to look unbridled feelings into one another’s eyes.

The other attraction, in the rear, was a captive, a mere boy, as white as any in the multitude, and paler than the palest. Tall and lithe as he was, his age was scarcely a whit above fourteen. He was dressed as an Indian; he bore himself like a sullen brave. At his side was old Annawon, the last of King Philip’s councilors, who, having surrendered under a promise of “good quarter” was even now being led to his execution.

The interest centered, however, in the boy. Through the stoicism which he labored to hold as a mask upon his face, the signs of anguish played like an undercurrent. In all the throng he had but a single friend, the Red-man with whom he was marching. He looked about at the pitiless embankment of faces. Near him a score of nimble boys were running, a frantic desire to strike him depicted in their eyes. Further away a tall man was moving, perforce, with the tide. On his shoulder he bore a little Puritan maiden, who might have been crushed had he placed her on her feet. She was looking at the boy-captive with eyes that seemed a deeper brown for their very compassion. She clung to the man who held her, with a tense little fist. Her other tiny hand was pressed upon her cheek till all about each small finger was white, in the bonny apple-blush of her color. It seemed as if she must cry out to the young prisoner, in sympathy.

While the boy was gazing back his answer to the child—a quiver in consequence almost loosening his lip—an urchin near him abruptly cast a stone that struck him smartly in the side. With a panther-like motion the captive launched himself upon his assailant and bore him to earth in a second. The old councillor, Annawon, spoke some soft, quick word at which the lad in buckskin immediately abandoned his overthrown antagonist and regained his place in the march. His eyes blinked swiftly, but in vain, for tears, of anger and pain, forced their way between his lids and so to his cheeks, when he dashed them swiftly away on his sleeve.

The foot-soldiers scurried forward and closed in about their dangerous charge. The bawling youths of Plymouth seemed to multiply by magic. But their opportunities for committing further mischief were presently destroyed. The pageant was passing Plymouth jail. An officer hustled ten of his men about the boy-prisoner and wedged them through the press of people toward this place of gloom. Above the clamor then rose a voice, and in the Indian tongue the boy-captive heard the words:

“Farewell, Little-Standing-Panther.”

It was old Annawon, who had divined that there would be no other parting with the lad, who was the only creature which the war had left on earth for him to love.

The boy cried: “Farewell,” and the passage through the people closed behind him.

Those who looked beheld old Annawon smile faintly and sadly. It was the only expression which had played across his face since his surrender, and there was never another.

Through nearly every street the glad procession wound. At length, the head of the butchered King Philip was thrust upon an iron stake, which was planted deeply in the ground. Governor Winslow then requested that the people disperse to their several homes.

The night at length came down—night the beneficent, that cloaks the tokens of men’s barbarisms. Then the moon arose, casting a pale, cold light, lest remorse lose her way. What a passionless calm settled upon the sleeping village!

At last, with a tread as silent as that of death itself, an active figure crept from shadow to shadow, in the streets which the moon had silver-plated. The lone human being came to the square wherein was planted the stake with the moon-softened head upon it. The visitor was the white boy-captive, dressed in his Indian toggery. He had escaped from the jail.

In the moonlight he came forward slowly. He halted and extended his arms toward the stake with its motionless burden. He approached in reverence, murmuring brokenly in the Indian tongue:

“Metacomet—Metacomet,——my foster-father,——I have come.”

He knelt upon the ground and clasping the cold iron stake in his arms, he sobbed and sobbed, as if his heart would break.

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