A Captive Heart

Screams, horrendous screams, shattered Sarah’s dreams, turning them into nightmares that fateful early morning. Bolting upright in bed, she shivered as the shrieks grew louder and closer, piercing the pre-dawn darkness. Gunshots rang through the village and the flames from burning houses lit up her window, choking her as she struggled to breathe. She realized now that some of the screams were coming from just behind the quilt which hung from the rafters of their house. She was too frightened to look to see what might be happening to her family.
Suddenly a bloodied face pulled back her curtain and hovered over her, causing her heart to start beating so loudly it almost drowned out the screams and gunshots. The frightful man covered in black and red paint on his bare chest and face, and with hair in stiff ridges that extended from his forehead to his neck, jerked her from her warm bed and motioned for her to get dressed and follow him.
She trembled as she pulled some undergarments on underneath her chemise and rummaged through the carved chest at the end of her bed for an extra pair of warm stockings. She hastily pulled them on and tied them as best as she could with her shaking hands. Next she found her petticoat hanging on a peg on the wall. She put that on and then came her homespun woolen bodice followed by her indigo colored waistcoat and matching skirt. She started to reach for her apron, but the attacker held his hatchet over her head and told her no. Then she reached for her lovely leather shoes with shiny buckles that Ebenezer had made for her in the fall and struggled to put them on with trembling hands, never letting her eyes waiver from watching the frightening figure who hovered over her and motioned for her to hurry.
Hardly being able to breathe, she grabbed her woolen cloak and hastily threw it over her shoulders. She had no time to fix her hair, but pushed some of the loose strands under her cap.
The hideous stranger dragged her through the curtain where she was confronted with the terrifying sight of her father David struggling against several Indian attackers while her mother, white-faced and dressed in only her muslin nightdress, nursed Sarah’s wailing two-year-old baby sister Abigail to try and comfort and quiet her. Her brothers, Jonathan and Ebenezer, were futilely trying to ward off the attackers before being told to get dressed quickly.
The Indian attackers were pillaging the kitchen area, shoving food into their mouths and throwing items into one of the quilts they had ripped from her parents’ bed. Sarah watched as they grabbed hams, dried fruit, loaves of bread, cooking utensils and her father’s musket, powder and shot. They smashed her mother’s beautiful china that had come from England and been handed down to her from her mother and her grandmother, and destroyed whatever they couldn’t use. While the Indians were busy in the kitchen pillaging and filling their bellies, her wounded father grabbed the family Bible that had been such a comfort to them all just hours earlier and stuffed it in a purse which was attached to his belted leather breeches. He helped his wife dress while Sarah dressed her little sister Abigail.
“Has anyone seen Benjamin?” Sarah whispered to her father as she looked around the room.
He shook his head and said, “We must pray that he was not slain in his bed.”
Then they were all seized, bound with leather cords and carried away up the hill to the Meeting House where they were met with other captives also bound and wounded. Sarah looked around to see if her brother Benjamin was there, but he was still missing. She wondered if he was already dead in his bed as her father had feared.
“Where is Joseph?” she wondered, scanning all the faces of all those being held in the Meeting House and not seeing her betrothed. As they waited in the red glare brought about by the burning of the homes in the village, Sarah leaned against her mother and wept silently, afraid that if she cried out, she would be brutally and unmercifully killed as she’d seen happen to many of her friends and neighbors on the way to the Meeting House.
Surrounded by men crying out in loud prayers to God to save them and women weeping for murdered children and spouses, Sarah remembered the verses from Psalm 56, the one her father had read before bed the night before, whispering them to her younger brothers Ebenezer and Jonathan.