THE FIFTH SUN SAGA: CAPTIVITY
by
Corinna Parr
SMASHWORDS EDITION
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PUBLISHED BY:
Corinna Parr on Smashwords
The Fifth Sun Saga: Captivity
Copyright © 2012 by Corinna Parr
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This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.
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Adult Reading Material
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CAPTIVITY
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Chapter 1
"And the very next week the enemy came upon our town like bears bereft of their whelps or so many ravenous wolves, rending us and our lambs to death. But what shall I say? God seemed to leave His people to themselves and order all things for His own holy ends." -- Mary Rowlandson, The Sovereignty and Goodness of God
It struck Reverend Keel as indefinably wrong that Goodwife Morton wouldn't look at him. He considered himself a man of presence: tall, narrow and jagged, like a bolt from the heavens, with cloud-white hair and a hook of a nose down which he would roll the most penetrating looks.
There was nothing else of interest in the little rectory sitting room where Elizabeth Morton perched, her hands crossed primly atop her apron. Several wooden chairs, dark and glossy with age, were stationed around the table; a faded crimson rug lay beneath, and a sideboard nearby. In such humble quarters, a prominent Boston preacher like Keel might expect to cut a figure not much less than Christ himself returned to earth. And yet while the Reverend pulled his books and paper from his satchel, fanned them gracefully beneath the inkstand on the table, Mrs. Morton kept watch on the panes of the window.
Beyond them lay the hamlet of Northampton, and beyond that, the verge of the wilderness that swayed in the deep green of summer.
"I have come here, Goodwife Morton—" Keel began in his pulpit voice, then broke off. Thomas Morton's wife was young yet, not quite thirty, smooth and pale of skin. Her dark eyes seemed in sympathy with the shade dappling the ground beneath the trees. She appeared not to have noticed that he was speaking.
Reverend Keel cleared his throat. "I say, Mistress Morton, I have come here from Boston—" he stressed, and still the young matron kept her vigil. One hand uncurled atop her kersey skirt, and while the old man watched, she pressed down her apron with her fingertips to shape the inside of a healthy woman's thigh. Like a blind woman feeling her way, she bumped her touch over the heavy cloth towards the place where her legs joined.
Keel swallowed.
"Goodwife Morton."
Her head eased around at the Reverend's call. Wisps of chocolate hair that had escaped her bun floated about the woman's ears; those dark eyes watched him now, with an alien repose so unsettling that it made him look down at his papers.
"As I was saying. I've come from Boston to bear witness to the power and goodness of the Lord in preserving you during your captivity." Keel fished his quill from the stand, tipped it precisely with black ink. "These are times of trial for Zion, but once God has made his covenant with a people—"
"Is that what you'll put down, Reverend Keel?" Elizabeth's voice was high and gentle, as if she spoke across a great distance. Her gaze fell to the wattle on his throat, then his trim shoulders. "Will you go back to Boston and tell people that the Lord watched over me while I dwelt among the Indians?"
The quill paused, inches above the parchment's cream, and then Keel went on to write, 'Testimony of Mrs. Elizabeth Morton. Taken in Northampton this 12th of July, the year of our Lord 1640.' "Certainly you have been tested by God, Goody Morton," he consoled. "So many weeks among a heathen people, bereft of family and church, subject to want, exhaustion and fear." He sent the young woman a glance along the arch of his nose and a frail, paternal smile. "And yet here you are again, alive. We should accept God's punishments and be thankful for His mercies."
"God didn't preserve me," Elizabeth assured him, and again the Reverend paused in his writing. She turned her attention back to the window, to the forest. "I've come to doubt whether He tested me, either. Perhaps He failed me, or I failed Him; perhaps we never met in the wood." The matron's words were so mild that Keel could feel them creeping down his spine.
"I don't know God anymore, Reverend Keel," she murmured. "Will you write that?"
The old man's hand shook a scrawl of black onto the page. He put the quill carefully back in the stand, pursed his lips, and began, "Mistress Morton, sometimes when a body has had a shock—"
"My body has had so many shocks, Reverend." Her full, wine-dark lips crept apart, and she moistened them with the tip of her tongue. Keel found himself watching her mouth, as one might a flash of sunlight glistening over water. "So many..." she continued. "Shall I tell you about the wilderness?"
Elizabeth Morton smiled sadly at him and his heart caught in his chest for a beat. And when it was clear that he had no more words for her, she told him.
Chapter 2
The Indian's name was Nicomet, and his prizes from Northampton fight were Elizabeth Morton and a bottle of Scotch whiskey. He'd taken both from the shell of burning timber that had once been her family home. In his wigwam at the Indians' forest camp, he kissed the bottle and left the woman to wait on her knees.
Elizabeth was terrified. The night outside Nicomet's hovel was bright with fires and alive with the whoops and alien chatter of the braves celebrating their victory over the Englishmen. Nicomet hung by the flap, swilling whiskey and now and then adding his own hoarse, reeling cry to the chaos of sound. He had greying brown hair, cropped close to his head save for a single shock down the middle, but his build was still powerful—more so than that of her husband, Elizabeth thought. Ash covered his chin, his mouth and his bony cheeks; his chest was plastered with red earth in streaks and whorls.