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Pater noster qui es in caelis, santificetur nomen tuum. Adveniat regnum tuum. Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo et in terra. Cultrum nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie.
The Lord's Prayer in Latin.
Ubi mors ibi spes.
She wondered why the forest was so clear now, why she could see the beautiful rise of old trees all the way up and down the hills, and why there was no bramble or brush to grab at her and tear holes in her clothing. But she could not find an answer.
For nothing in her ken would allow her to imagine that it was the piscataway, the people of these parts, who so carefully burned the small brush away, and the saplings, too, to better see their game through the trees. She did not know that many of the trees around her were hickory and chestnut and hazelnut and walnut, and that, should she dig below the leaf-litter, she would find ample nuts to sustain her even in these hungry times after the winter and before the full bursting-forth of spring. And that these trees, too, had been planted by the gardeners of this place. For her understanding of
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She had known nothing at all of the natural world when she was raised in the city and yet felt herself very wise in its ways. And now, after having faced it in all her extremity, and after having learned so much, she sensed how deep her ignorance ran and felt dizzy by all that remained to be learned.
The drizzle passed and she walked some more, and as she walked, she found the smooth-barked trees with the tastiest buds and she named these trees Silvers.
Naming, she understood, made things more visible.
She felt she understood now the first man Adam, how with each name he felt himself growing more powerful, closer to the god who had created and named him. Name after name, Adam felt his dominion tipping into domination until he believed that he owned the world by naming the things in it and that all the things of the world were his to do with as he wished.
How, in coming to this country, her fellow englishmen believed they were naming this place and this people for the first time, and how it conferred upon them dominion here in this place, although, she was now surprised at her thought, surely the people of this place had their own names for things. But one name takes precedence over another, and so the wheel of power turned.
And she was chilled to her soul, for it was reflexive, for she feared the fate of women anywhere, women caught alone on a dark street in a city, in a country lane far from human ears, in any place where there were no other people nearby to witness.
But in the night, a sense that all was not right awakened her, and she looked through the curtain of falling water for a long while until she could make out what had disturbed her. There at the bend in the little pool was a bear sitting in the shallows, letting the cold water pour over its legs.
It was a giant of a bear.
And though she found it hard to read the expression upon a bear’s face, she believed that what she saw there was a sense of wonder.
Something within her went out toward the bear in a powerful ripple of sympathy. There were times when she, also, found herself within a similar upwelling of awe.
Once, in the cathedral in the city, when the mistress, newly widowed of the goldsmith, took the household to hear the new minister preaching, she had sat in the pew and watched as the man shone; he was as handsome as a girl, he looked like a feasted cat, his words were so gold...
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At the time, even the girl’s own knees had gone soft, for he was seeming honeyed inside and out, and she did not kno...
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But in the middle of this first and inspired sermon, the girl had looked up to see the light pouring in through the window in such a way that it insinuated itself under the whitewash that covered the popish painting of the saints upon the wall, so that the saints themselves seemed to have stepped out of the whiteness and were looking directly down upon her, insignificant as she was, a mere flea to them, and their faces were glowing with such sorrow, such radiant love, that a godly feeling rushed over her skin, first, then deeper into the meat inside.
And this thought made her shake, for if the gospel was changeable between species, then god was not immoveable. Then god was changeable according to the body god spoke through. And that god could change according to the person in the moment the soul was encountering god. And this meant that when the godliest of the ministers in the city and in this awful place, back in the fort, spoke on god’s behalf they were only speaking a mote of the far greater truth. They were only speaking the part of god that they themselves could glimpse. And this truth was only as small as they themselves were small.
And perhaps, she thought, god was neither trinity nor singular but multiple, as various as the many living things that did live upon the earth. Perhaps god is all. Perhaps god already lived within all. And this place and these people here did not need the english to bring god to them.
malmsey butt,
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It rose up hideous, her anger at the minister dragging along his wife, his daughter, the girl, in his greed for riches. And neither the child Bess nor she was ever asked if they wished to come. For what is a girl but a vessel made to hold the desires of men.
Are you sorry to leave this place that has allowed you these years of life? No, she said, for the blight of the english will come to this remoteness as well. It will spread into this land and infect this land and devour the people who were here first; it will slaughter them, diminish them. The hunger inside the god of my people can only be sated by domination. They will dominate until there is nothing left, then they will eat themselves. I am not of them. I will not be.
