Jamestown (The Keepers of the Ring) (14 page)

Fallon blinked, and made an effort to push himself up onto his elbows. The exertion made his head swim, but a delicious aroma wafting from a wooden bowl caused his stomach to spasm in hunger.

The man noticed Fallon’s glance at the bowl. “In sooth, it does smell good, doesn’t it? ‘Tis good chicken soup, made fresh from one of England’s fair hens brought to Virginia by the grace of His Majesty the King.”

Fallon gazed blankly at the man, and the stranger threw back his head and laughed. “Surely you are acquainted with chickens? But they are not important. Your strength is what matters. Eat this soup, boy, and prepare to tell me your history.”

Fallon took the bowl as the man’s words rang in his ears. The language was English, he recognized it easily enough, but the accent was more clipped and pronounced that the tongue
he had spoken in Ocanahonan.

He lifted the wooden spoon to his mouth and sipped. Whatever a chicken was, ‘twas of certain it made a delicious soup.

“Now, my boy, do you have a name?”

Fallon paused to swallow. “Your name first, sir. Though you have been kind, there are enemies in the land.”

The man’s eyebrow shot up in an appreciative gesture. “Good thinking, my boy. I am John Smith, here with a contingent of settlers in the king’s Virginia, in particular the Jamestown colony. We found you washed up on the banks of our own James River.”

“The James?” An alarm rang in Fallon’s head. Was this man one of the despised Spanish he had often heard about? Though he spoke English, Fallon knew that the English had a queen, the
Spanish
had a king.

He lowered the spoon and pushed the bowl away. “If y’are Spanish, sir, I need not talk to you,” he said, clamping his mouth closed.

“Spanish?” Again Smith’s eyebrow shot up. “My boy, have you ever seen a Spaniard? I am as English as a man can be, and as loyal to the king—”

“What happened to the queen?”

Smith nodded slowly as the light of understanding came into his eye. “Ah, ‘twas during Elizabeth’s reign that John White departed,” he whispered, more to himself than to the boy. “The Virgin Queen Elizabeth rests today in the bosom of our Savior,” he said, placing his hand across his heart in a sweeping gesture. “Her heir, King James, reigns in her place. We are English, my boy, as are you. ‘Tis as plain as the freckled nose upon your face. Now tell me,” Smith whispered, fingering his beard in speculation. “From whence came you? And what became of the others with you?”

Against his will, Fallon’s hungry eyes darted again to the bowl, and Smith pushed the bowl back toward Fallon. “I was born in Ocanahonan,” Fallon said, taking the bowl into his lap. “My parents were Audrey and Roger Bailie.”

Smith’s eyes glowed with enthusiasm. “Roger Bailie was one of John White’s assistants,” he said, startling Fallon with a sharp slap on the back. “Does your father still live?”

Fallon shook his head and slurped another spoonful of soup. “He died right after I was born, or so my mother told me. She married again later, an Indian werowance called
Rowtag. We all lived together in Ocanahonan, but about two months ago the forces of Powhatan destroyed the village.”

“How did you come to escape?” Smith whispered, his eyes burning with mingled admiration and curiosity.

Despite his resolve to be strong, Fallon’s eyes watered as he recalled that night. “My mother and father bade me take Noshi and Gilda to safety,” he said. “We crept out of the city through a hole under the wall of the palisade and drifted down the river in a canoe.”

Smith drew in his breath. “Did no one else survive?”

Fallon nodded. “Four men, who were wounded but nursed by Gepanocon, the werowance at Ritanoe. He took care of them because they knew how to work copper. But only a few days ago Powhatan’s warriors attacked Ritanoe, and there is not much left of the village. The chief and the four Englishmen fled, the women and children were killed, Noshi was sold into slavery, and Gilda is with Powhatan—”

“Who are these people, Noshi and Gilda?” Smith asked.

“My children, my
responsibility
,” Fallon answered, his voice cracking. Guilt avalanched over him, burying his heart in regret. He should have fought harder, he should have protested more, mayhap he should never have lingered at Ritanoe—

Smith stood and patted him on the shoulder. “Here is bread and water,” he said, handing Fallon a hard loaf and a hollow gourd. “Eat, drink, and rest. But do not stir from this tent until I have returned and know what to do with you.”

****

John Smith’s head swam with conflicting ideas as he walked about the camp. One of the colony’s missions was to find John White’s missing settlers, and if the boy could be believed, they were all dead. Only half-breed children and pitiful creatures like the confused boy remained, and mayhap four Englishmen who were naught but the prized possessions of a greedy Indian chief. If the boy had told the truth, and John Smith believed he had, then the chief Powhatan had not only utterly destroyed a mighty English city, but was ruthless enough to do so again. Smith had already learned enough from his travels among the savages to know that Powhatan was greatly feared and respected, and his tribal network rivaled anything the English might hope to establish in the years to come.

If English colonization was to be successful, the English would have to befriend Powhatan.

But honorable Englishmen could not and would not befriend a murderer of English subjects.

For the sake of Jamestown’s survival, the investors in London must not know what happened to the men and women of John White’s colony.

How then could he explain the boy?

John Smith had his answer by nightfall. He reentered his tent with another bowl of stew for the starving teenager, then took a seat on a small stool by the boy’s side. “You, Fallon Bailie, are an Englishman,” he began, watching as the boy began to devour the stew. “You need to visit England and become acquainted with the land that hath given you birth. Visit the birthplace of your mother, find the church where your father was baptized. These things are possible, you know, and I will help you find your way.”

The boy looked up, his eyes bright. “You’d take me to England some day?”

“I can’t take you myself,” Smith answered, resting his elbows on his knees and tenting his fingers. “But Captain Newport, who is leaving for England in two days, will see that y’are settled and have all that you need. All I ask of you, Fallon, is that you never tell anyone else the story you told me. If anyone asks, tell the truth about where your parents were born. But never shall the words Powhatan or Ocanahonan cross your lips again.”

Doubt shone in the boy’s eyes; Smith had asked a difficult thing. He raised a hand to forestall the boy’s question. “I cannot give you a reason, Fallon, but you must trust me. The English have good reason to befriend the savages now, for we are vulnerable as we seek to establish ourselves here.”

“I cannot befriend Powhatan,” Fallon answered, his voice sharp. “He’s a murderer, and he holds Gilda! And I cannot go back to England now, for I have promised to take care of Gilda and Noshi. Thank you, Master Smith, for your offer, but as long as they are lost I must find them—”

“I will search for them in your place,” Smith interrupted, placing his hand on Fallon’s shoulder in a fatherly gesture. The touch seemed to calm the boy, for he grew still. “Would it not be better for me to find them and send them to England to be with you? After all, what place have they in such a land as this?”

The boy sat back, thinking, and after a moment he lifted his eyes to Smith’s. “You will search diligently? They are but four years old, and cannot take care of themselves. And when you find them, you will send them to me in England?”

“Just tell me how I shall know them,” Smith said. He crossed his arms and leaned back, smiling confidently. “If you leave with Captain Newport like a good lad, I’ll find your little friends and send them to you just as soon as I’m able. You’ll see, Fallon, all will be well.”

The boy took a deep breath, resigning himself to the idea, and Smith knew the decision had been made. “Noshi is marked with this mark,” he said, pointing to a pattern of dots upon his wrists and arm. “We are sons of a chief of the Mangoak tribe. All of our marks include the sign of the cross.”

“Duly noted,” Smith said, listening half-heartedly. “And the girl, Gilda? How shall I know her?”

A secret smile seemed to play around the corners of the boy’s mouth. “She is with the Powhatan,” Fallon replied. “She is beautiful. Her eyes are the color of a morning sky. And she wears around her neck a circle of gold.”

On the morning of June twenty-first, the men of Jamestown stretched a piece of sail horizontally between two trees, a rough canvas altar. Communion was celebrated according to the rites of the Church of England, and Fallon watched, fascinated, from within John Smith’s tent. The sound of singing men stirred his soul; he had not heard such singing since the worship services in the chapel at Ocanahonan. Though he missed the women’s voices, still the words of the hymn comforted his heart:

Jesus! the very thought of Thee

With sweetness fills my breast:

But sweeter far Thy face to see

And in thy presence rest.

No voice can sing, no heart can frame,

Nor can the memory find,

A sweeter sound than Jesus’ name

The Savior of mankind.

But what to those who find? Ah! this

Nor tongue nor pen can show

The love of Jesus, what it is

None but his loved ones know.

After darkness fell that night, John Smith gave Fallon a suitable shirt to cover his tattoos, then led the boy aboard the
Susan Constant.
After introducing him to Captain Christopher Newport, Smith wished them both a pleasant journey. “Don’t forget your promise to search for Gilda and Noshi,” Fallon reminded Smith, half-afraid he was making the wrong decision. “You’ll send them to join me in England.”

“I won’t forget,” Smith answered, waving casually. “Now get below and keep quiet. If anyone asks, Captain Newport is prepared to say y’are his cabin boy.”

Fallon nodded and crept down the narrow set of stairs into the lower deck of the ship. The sailors looked at him curiously, and he paced for a quarter of an hour before following the example of the other seamen and wrapping himself in a bit of canvas and lying on the floor to sleep.

But sleep did not come easily. He was on his way to England, the land of his mother’s and father’s birth, but he had no idea what to expect there. And as he dozed fitfully on the hard planking of the ship, the wind whistled over the deck and through the open hatches and reminded him eerily of Gilda’s pleading cry
.

eight

W
eromacomico, the city of Powhatan, stood on the banks of the Powhatan River like a stalwart fortress. A many-fingered swirl of dark smoke rose from the towering timber palisade like an ominous warning hand, but inside the walls small gardens and huts extended outward from the central fire in a neat circular pattern.

As dusk crept into the woods at sunset, the twenty huts of Powhatan
’s city filled with an assortment of villagers. Young children usually slept with their mothers; on clear, warm nights fathers often sat by the village campfire in the circle of elders throughout the long hours of darkness. As soon as children reached puberty they weaned themselves from their mothers’ sides, and young women frequently filled a hut of their own while unmarried warriors slept outside under the stars.

The hut to which Pocahontas took Gilda was more primitive than the two-story house in which she had lived with her mama and papa at Ocanahonan.
Fashioned of the trunks of young bowed trees and covered with silky grass mats, the sturdy dwelling sheltered a host of young women each night. Gilda crept to a mat next to Pocahontas and breathed in the scent of warm femininity. The girls’ easy banter wrapped around Gilda like water around a rock, and she fell asleep easily amid girlish giggles and the light, quick sounds of even breathing.

Just as the sweet waters of the Powhatan River merged with the salty currents of the great sea, Gilda blended into
village life. Known as Numees, the Algonquin name for “sister,” she was fiercely adopted by Pocahontas, the chief’s favorite daughter.

After her rough and tumble days with Noshi and Fallon, Pocahontas brought a uniquely feminine influence to Gilda
’s life. forgetting her grief, she studied the older girl with fascinated interest. The chief’s popular twelve-year-old daughter was warm-hearted, sensible, and endlessly cheerful. She charmed even the most dour elders with her disarming friendliness, and Gilda soon came to adore her. Pocahontas taught Gilda how to comb the silky tangles of her hair into braids, and Gilda longed for the day when her own hair would fall to her waist in a plume of black gold like Pocahontas’.

Though the other small children ran naked throughout the camp, Gilda insisted upon wearing proper garments.
She had always worn clothes in the village of Ocanahonan, and since Pocahontas wore a skirt, Gilda refused to do without.

While the men of the village went about the business of hunting, fishing, and subduing enemies, Gilda learned the ways of women from Pocahontas.
Together they made the woven grass mats that were an elemental furnishing in Indian huts; they wove baskets, fashioned pots out of clay, and pounded corn in mortars. The girls helped make bread, prepared the victuals the hunters brought from the woods, and throughout the summer they planted and gathered corn.

The children of the village had many names, according to the humor and whim of their parents, and Gilda came to know each child, but she loved Pocahontas best and remained close to the older girl
’s side. More than once she felt the sternly appraising eyes of the great chief upon her, and she turned away in fear, knowing he had the authority to make her go away like Noshi and Fallon.

None of the other villagers seemed to care what she did.
To Powhatan’s many wives Gilda was but another mouth to feed, another body to wash. Once Gilda looked up to see Kitchi, Powhatan’s esteemed son, watching her with a flicker of interest in his brown eyes. He was a handsome warrior, not old and not young, with an angular face, high cheekbones, and dark hair that fell thickly past his shoulders. Shadowed by thick brows, his eyes studied her carefully. Uncomfortable, Gilda fled his gaze and ran back to Pocahontas.

The hot breath of August set leaves to dancing through the
center of the camp, and Powhatan kept his eyes half-closed against the heat as the conjuror to encourage the hunters who would soon leave the village. The mournful, whining voice of the priest rose above the rhythmic thumping of drums, and the hunters whirled and danced in an appeal to the gods that their efforts would fill the storehouses with food for the winter.

Through his half-closed lids, Powhatan studied his son, Kitchi.
The young man sat with his legs crossed by the ceremonial fire, effortlessly composing his own song to the gods, and Powhatan wondered how deeply his son’s heart was involved in the effort. Since the arrival of the blue-eyed girl, Kitchi had seemed even more reserved than usual. Always more eager to listen than talk, he had often sat quietly in his father’s hut to absorb wisdom from the elders, but now he spent his days wandering in the woods or singing in the camp while his eyes followed the child Numees.

Powhatan glanced toward the small knot of girls who lingered outside the circle of hunters.
Pocahontas stood head and shoulders above the others, in manner as well as in form, and her eyes sparkled with merriment as she contemplated the dancers. The corner of Powhatan’s lip curved upward in a smile. She was a mischievous one, that girl, but he could deny her nothing. Though he was fond of all his many children, she had most thoroughly captured his heart.

Numees stood in Pocahontas
’ shadow, her bright blue eyes wide as she watched the gyrations of the hunters. Reflexively, Powhatan’s eyes shifted from Numees to Kitchi and back again. Could this child truly be Kitchi’s own daughter? Opechancanough had said so, but Powhatan found it difficult to allow the idea to germinate within him. How could he, the greatest of Indian chiefs, have a blue-eyed granddaughter?

Powhatan mentally compared the girl
’s golden skin, the shape of her chin, and her strong limbs to Kitchi’s powerful form. By the gods, Opechancanough’s story could be true. The girl favored Kitchi in every way but those sky blue eyes.

Powhatan grunted to himself.
‘Twas good that the girl stayed close to Pocahontas. With the chief’s favorite daughter as her companion, little Numees would be coddled, protected, and cared for. And he, Powhatan, would not have to take a hand in her upbringing.

Nine

B
eshrew these evil bugs!”

John Smith slapped another biting mosquito on his neck and cursed the day the council had chosen this marshy bog for their fort.
The peninsula that had seemed so perfect a spot in May had become fetid and contaminated by August. And though September breezes surely blew cool over England, the miasmic heat of summer still hovered over the low-lying fort at Jamestown. The sweltering heat descended like a blanket to sap the strength of even the most able men and the sultry humidity of night prevented solid and restful sleep.

Unbearable weather was not the only problem.
The wells they had dug produced only brackish, sour water; the misty lowlands were nothing but a breeding ground for mosquitoes; and the saturating humidity rotted the food stored aboard the
Discovery,
the pinnace Newport had left behind. Each man’s daily ration of grain had to be reduced, and the barley remaining in the ship’s hold teemed with maggots. If not for the sturgeon caught in the river, Smith knew the entire company would have died of sickness and starvation.

Despite the river
’s provision, men died by the score. By the time the first leaves had changed to the bright colors of autumn, the group of settlers had dwindled considerably. But when other men fainted, John Smith thrived. He awoke with feverish energy each morning and immediately enlisted men to dig fresh graves for those who had died in the night. Motivating the men to work was difficult, for his companions seemed to walk in the twilight world of the half alive. “If thou faint in the day of adversity,” Smith taunted them, knowing a quote from Holy Scriptures would rouse the men when all else failed, “thy strength is small. Rise with God, my friends, and let us prove ourselves.”

But as strength dwindled, so did the men
’s patience, and the smallest incidents of trouble festered into major confrontations. Not even the remaining council members were able to work peaceably together. Smith felt his antipathy toward President Edward Wingfield grow with each passing day, and only the patient Christian exhortations of Reverend Hunt kept Smith from clapping Wingfield in chains and declaring a general revolt. The tyrant allotted food unfairly, giving more to the aristocrats who did less work, and ‘twas rumored among the men that Wingfield was a Catholic Spanish spy. Why else would he have
Maria
as a middle name?

Unless Wingfield proved able to restore order and urge his high-minded gentlemen friends to participate in physical labor, Smith feared that the colony
’s days were numbered. And he would kill before he died due to another man’s negligence.

By the end of September, Edward Maria Wingfield awaited justice as a prisoner in the hold of the
Discovery.
With the aid of John Ratcliffe and John Martin, Smith had succeeded in overthrowing the pompous Wingfield. Ratcliffe was the new president, and Smith sincerely hoped he would prove to be better at the job than the London Company’s first choice.

But within a week, it became obvious that Ratcliffe loved the abstract aspects of leadership, not the daily details of survival.
While Ratcliffe pondered unnecessary particulars of administering the colony’s non-existent political life, Smith took a firm hand in his own survival. He succeeded in trading worthless trinkets for maize from the Indians, and oversaw work companies that felled a substantial number of trees for the building of daub and wattle houses. Thus far they had lived only in rough canvas tents, but the canvas coverings smelled of decay and rot. Sturdy, substantial houses would be necessary if the colony were to survive the winter.

Smith was prepared to ignore Ratcliffe, if necessary, to become virtual dictator of the colony.
Already the wind blew cool enough to knife lungs and tingle bare skin, and ‘twas too late in the year to sow corn. If the remaining men were to be fed through the winter, John Smith would have to beg, borrow or steal grain. Foraging expeditions would be necessary, which meant he would encounter savages probably as hungry and desperate as he.

Smith tightened his belt around his thinning waist and
steeled himself to the necessity of the task that lay ahead.

Ten

F
ar across the great Western Ocean, Fallon Bailie stood at the rail of the
Susan Constant.
He let out a whistle of surprise as the seamen scampered up the rigging to cheer for the purpling mass that rose against the hazy horizon. “‘Tis England, my boy,” Captain Newport called, grinning down from the poopdeck at the stern. “My home and yours. I’ve seen many sights while weatherin’ the ocean seas, but none so welcome as the jeweled isle you’ll see rising up to greet us.”

Fallon did not answer, but continued to stare out across the sea.
In the past weeks he had seen many wonders he could never have imagined—large, air-breathing sea creatures as long as the ship and of certain more powerful, fires that burned on boats and cooked gelatinous pottages of fish and dried, tasteless beef, oceans that stretched far beyond the horizon, and men whose love and purpose for living was found in the sea.

And now he stood ready to visit England, the country from which his mother and father had sailed to find a new life in Virginia.
How strange
, he thought, watching the quilted landscape unfold before him as the ship drew nearer,
that their land should be foreign to me, and yet my birthplace was foreign to them. But yet their God guides me, and of certain our worlds are mere specks to him, like dots on a map.

The captain barked an order, the sails fluttered down, and the ship slowed to enter the English Channel.
Seamen on both sides of the bow pitched lead lines overboard to measure the depth of the channel, and the ship proceeded cautiously. Why were they so careful? Hadn’t the captain been here before?

Fallon looked up at Newport and the captain seemed to
guess his question. “It never hurts to know where you’re going, lad,” he said, settling his elbows on the ship’s railing as he listened to the seamen call out the depths. “The bottom changes after a storm, and I’d wager there have been a good many since we departed last year. ‘Tis a good lesson to remember—always take careful soundings, for nothing ever stays the same. The shifting rocks on the bottom can bring a ship down.”

The bosun approached with a question, and Captain Newport left the poopdeck and left Fallon alone with his thoughts.
He leaned on the railing, consciously imitating the captain he had come to admire, and gazed with wonder at the civilization that had begun to slip by him. So many tall ships and rooftops and cultivated fields in this place! So many people! Ocanahonan had been a large town, but there had never been more than two hundred people living within its walls. Yet Captain Newport had told him that thousands lived in the city of London alone.