BOOK TWO
From Cabot’s children to Melba’s slave days
Ducksunne and two other unlucky tribesmen were carted out to the North Road for a quick trial and hanging. As the rope was being tightened around his leathery neck, someone in the crowd recognized him.
"Hold on there, governor. Is that not Sunny Duck?"
"And what of it?" asked the executioner.
"By God, he is the savior of the colony."
A restless murmur swept through the crowd. They had all been children once, had grown up with the legend of the beneficent Sunny Duck. A town alderman rose to be heard. "Good brethren, the Bible says an eye for an eye, does it not! This heathen has been condemned for murder. Lest you forget, Sunny Duck is the product of original sin. Look at him! His half-breed features and tippling nature are recrudescent proof that no sin escapes the Almighty. He had his chance many times over to accept the Gospel, but did not. And this is the result. His execution is right, it serves its place in the intricate workings of a moral world. Sin of any kind bequeaths a sinner's fate."
The latch was kicked, the trap door opened, and Ducksunne fell through with an audible crack of spine….
But not his spine. His rope snapped first, and he hit the ground with a sickening crack of bones, injured but alive. “This old Indian,” mumbled the executioner, “is as unlucky as a pair of left boots.”
It took five men to transport Ducksunne back down the road and into the tavern where he had been hoping to get a drink. The soldiers laid him out on a table sticky with ale. Then, they took great pains to revive him. A doctor was brought in. He “examined” Ducksunne from a distance, nodded and walked back out of the tavern.
A young woman in a bonnet and dress managed to slip past the soldiers. Before they realized that she was not white, the knife in her hand gleamed like a river trout. She threw herself at Ducksunne’s bindings and began a futile attempt to free him. Her tears landed on his chin. “Aque, Melba Blue Jay, you are strong of spirit,” he said, wishing to embrace his granddaughter but unable to make his arms work. Neither could he feel his legs. His body was now as broken as his spirit.
She buried her face in his shoulder. “Grandfather, I didn’t protect you.”
Furious at having been fooled by an Indian, the soldiers seized her and pried away her knife. She turned on them defiantly. “He is an Indian Holy Man! You give the Wampanoag the moral authority to commence war!” Her flawless English and gravitas stunned the soldiers. She freed herself and returned to his side. “What should I do, Grandfather?”
“Tell our people not to fight.” Ducksunne was incapable of saying more. He knew that he looked upon his granddaughter for the last time, and his heart was heavy. The soldiers threw her aside and lifted the old man. They carried him back outside and up the street to the gallows. Ducksunne heard Melba Blue Jay beseeching them the whole way. “Please! You call us heathens but no Indian would twice murder an innocent man!”
The executioner, checking the rope’s grip, ordered the men to stand Ducksunne upright until he could get the noose around him. Then he took in the slack and stretched Ducksunne’s paralyzed body. “All right, let’s get on with this.”
The trap door sprung again with a whack. “This day,” began one farmer’s journal of 2 June, “an old half-breed died twice in the colony.”
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