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Excerpted Inspirations #198

  • Writer: Linda Odhner, with photos by Liz Kufs
    Linda Odhner, with photos by Liz Kufs
  • Oct 6
  • 0 min read
[Miriam Willard and her family have been kidnapped by the Abenaki tribe from their home in New Hampshire in 1754, taken to Montreal, and sold into different households. Miriam is finally able to visit her little nieces.] Sue looked down at her new boots thoughtfully. “I wish Polly could be here too. Do you know where Polly is, Miriam? Does she have a nice room to sleep in?” “I’ve just been to see Polly. She has pretty clothes just like you, but she isn’t happy. You know how she always wanted to be near her mama.” Sue’s face was sober. “Poor Polly. She’s too little to know about the Blessed Mother.” Miriam started. “What do you mean, Sue?” “See, up there? The sisters gave it to me. She takes care of me.” Miriam was disturbed. Indeed she had noticed, the moment she had entered the room, the little statue that hung above Susanna’s bed. What heathenish things were they teaching this four-year-old child who could not understand any better? “What have they told you, Sue?” There was a fierceness to her tone that brought sudden tears to the child’s eyes. “They said she is the mother of our Lord,” she explained, her lips trembling. “They say I must pray to her every night to keep Mama and the baby safe out there in the woods. Isn’t it all right for me to, Miriam?” It was all wrong, Miriam knew. All her life she had been taught to despise this mysterious evil called Popery. Her grandfather had left England so that his children would never be taught such things. But looking down into Sue’s troubled face, Miriam did not know what to say. She looked back instead at the statue of the mother and child. It was a simple hand-carved figure, but it had been fashioned with skill and reverence. There was such gentleness about the way the mother’s arm curved around her child. “Don’t you think she’s pretty?” Sue asked. “Mama used to sit beside the fire and rock Captive just like that. In the night when I wake up and it’s all dark, I reach up and touch her, and then I can go back to sleep.” Miriam stooped and put her arms around Susanna. “I think she’s beautiful,” she whispered. “I’m sure it can’t be wrong, Sue, if it keeps you from being lonely. When Mama comes you can tell her about it.” The puckers smoothed out of Sue’s forehead. She wiped her eyes on the corner of Miriam’s kerchief and was her practical little self again. “I hope she comes soon,” she said confidently. “I want to show her my new shoes. Do you think when I go with Mama they will let me keep them?” That night, lying awake in the darkness of the loft over the kitchen, Miriam’s troubled thoughts went back to those disturbing moments. What should she have answered? Sue’s childish question had confronted her with a puzzle she had been trying to thrust in a far corner of her mind. What was there that was so dreadful about the way these people worshiped? At home everyone had spoken of the French as an idolatrous folk. But surely Hortense and Felicité, the kind women she had met today, even Madame, for all her haughtines, were not wicked. Moreover, she could not help seeing, as she went about the city, that their religion was as real and natural a part of their lives as the air and sunshine. On the streets the gentle priests and sisters mingled with the common folk and were greeted as friends. Last Sunday morning Hortense had offered to take her to church but, terrified at the thought, she had sat alone in the kitchen and repeated every word she could remember of the Divine Service. In the wilderness James had never allowed them to omit their worship. It was up to her now to uphold that faith. Yet today, confronted by Sue’s troubled eyes, she had betrayed all her teaching. Her own father would be angry, she knew. Susanna? She was not sure. There was a stern core of duty in Susanna that would make it difficult to ask her such a question. There was one person she longed to ask. Phineas Whitney, who was planning to become a minister. Strange, when she had never had the chance to speak of such things, that she knew she would never be afraid to ask him anything. She was glad she had answered as she had. Somehow, no matter what Susanna might say, she could not believe that a difference in belief should cause a child to be lonely and afraid. It was a very new thought. Elizabeth George Speare, Calico Captive (1957), pp. 128-131

 
 
 

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