Jamestown (The Keepers of the Ring) (29 page)

“And?” Fallon asked, alarmed by the minister’s somber face. “They heartily approve,” Reverend Archer said, breaking into a reluctant smile. “Your methods are unconventional, your discipline undeniably more lax than your predecessor’s, but there’s no gainsaying that the boys are happier and more productive since you took the position of headmaster. Time will prove your methods, of course, but the council would like you to continue permanently. You’d be the youngest headmaster in all of London, but in sooth—” he leaned forward confidentially, “—I believe y’are already the most respected.”

Fallon sat back, stunned. He could not deny that his work had been unbelievably rewarding and fulfilling; he had only to look into the contented eyes of Wart Clarence to know that the boys were better off under his tutelage than the prevailing “children should be seen and never heard” philosophy.

“The council is prepared to enlarge the school and increase the headmaster’s salary,” Reverend Archer went on, placing a sheet of parchment upon the desk. “They’d like the school to be a model for others. Of course you’ll have scores of learned academics poking about, seeking to discover how a twenty-three-year-old man has managed to instill both love and discipline in a pack of orphans, but something tells me you’ll be up to the challenge.”

“I would enjoy it,” Fallon admitted, a smile sweeping over his face as he thought of sour-faced critics coming face to face with love in action.

“But before you decide to accept our offer, there is another matter,” the minister said, holding up a finger. “It seems that his Majesty’s colony in Virginia hath gone tobacco mad. There is a demand for willing workers, including children, especially young boys. The street orphans, as you know, are not strong enough to handle a sea journey and life among the savages, so the council hath recommended that we send boys from our functioning orphanage schools. And since this academy hath made a name for itself in this short time, your school will be the prime source of our recruits.”

The announcement was unexpected and shocking. “I don’t understand,” Fallon said, shaking his head.

The minister shrugged. “‘Tis simple. The boys will work in Virginia for a term of indentured service until they are eligible to own and farm their own land.”

Fallon tilted his head, amazed. “Send orphans?” he repeated, his brain slow to comprehend that the idea was not an absurd jest. “Just like that? To Virginia?”

Archer nodded. “‘Tis quite an adventure, I’ll warrant. Of course not all the boys from the school will be sent, only those twelve and older. But their places at this academy will be filled immediately with children from the streets, and a new group will emigrate each year. Virginia hath what England needs, Master Bailie—wood, land, water—and England hath the manpower the colony desperately needs.”

“But—
children
?” Fallon asked. “Amongst the savages?” He felt a shiver pass down his spine as the minister’s words opened the door on memories he’d tried to bury. Just one day at Ritanoe had been filled with the odor of burning flesh, the agonized screams of women and children, and sights that would of certain curdle this minister’s refined blood—

“They won’t be thrown to the savages,” Reverend Archer said, pulling back as if Fallon had somehow insulted him. “They will live in a dormitory much like the one here. During the morning, they will attend language and Bible class; in the afternoons they will work in the tobacco fields. After a term of four or five years, they will be given a new suit of clothes and acreage to call their own. ‘Tis an admirable bargain.”

He thrust a letter toward Fallon, who took it up with a trembling hand:
“The Treasurer, Council, and Company of Virginia in London
,” he read,
“have taken into consideration the continual great forwardness of His Majesty’s honorable city of London in advancing the Plantation of Virginia. And forasmuch as we have now resolved to send next Spring very large supplies for the strength and increasing of the Colony, we pray your Lord and the rest to bestow your favor to furnish us with one hundred children of twelve years old and upward with allowance of three pounds apiece for their transportation and forty shillings apiece for their apparel. They shall be apprentices the boys till they come to twenty-one years of age; the girls till the like age or till they be married. Afterwards they shall be placed as tenants upon the public land with best conditions where they shall have houses with stock of corn and cattle to begin with, and afterward the moiety of all increase and profit whatsoever. And so we leave this motion to your honorable and grave consideration . . .”

“Until they are twenty-one,” Fallon said, reading the letter. “You said a term of four or five years.”

“If they are sixteen now, ‘twill be a term of five years,” Archer said, frowning.

Fallon lay the parchment upon the desk and stared at it, thinking. Wart Clarence was only twelve. If he chose to go to Virginia he would be a virtual slave for nine years, an eternity in such a harsh environment.

“I have spent much time in the study of Virginia,” Fallon said, slowly feeling his way. “The men of the London Company do not know all the dangers. ‘Twill be such a change for the boys—”

“If they had someone to care directly for them, ‘twould be better, of certain.” The minister slid the letter from under Fallon’s gaze and replaced it inside his satchel. He tented his hands. “You’ve expressed an interest in returning to Virginia, Master Bailie, and ‘tis the only reason I bring this news before you. The intelligent choice, of course, is to remain here as headmaster and let the council find someone else to care for the boys on the voyage.”

“This caregiver,” Fallon said slowly, raking a hand through his hair. “What would be required of him?”

The minister frowned. “Nothing of import. He would keep an eye on the boys during the sea voyage and get them settled under their new masters. Then he’d be free to make a life for himself in Virginia, if he wishes. If not, he could return to England and supervise another company of boys the next year.”

Fallon let his head fall to the back of his chair. What was God’s purpose in this conundrum? One position offered fulfillment, wealth, and security; the other a tenuous term of uncertainty, poverty, and the harshness of colonization. To another Englishman the correct choice would be obvious, but Fallon Bailie was not an Englishman.

Six months ago he would not have hesitated to board a ship for the colony, but the last few weeks had brought peace and purpose to Fallon’s life. Hadn’t he done enough? Mayhap his time of hoping was done; mayhap ‘twas time to settle down in England and forget Virginia altogether. He had hoped to find the answers he sought about his family from Rebecca Rolfe, but now that she was dead, what answers could he possibly find in Jamestown? A search for two children lost in the wilderness would be next to impossible. ‘Twas unlikely that Powhatan remained alive, and John Smith, who might
have the answers Fallon sought, lived now in London . . .

“Uncertain?” Reverend Archer asked, lifting an eyebrow. “I thought you might be. So I have arranged for you to visit John Rolfe this afternoon, before his ship sails for Virginia. He hath agreed to answer any questions you might have, and he is most eager to gather willing hands for his plantation in a place called Henrico. Though of course,” Archer said, standing, “we are hoping you will remain here with us.”

The man who answered Fallon’s knock was slim and pale, his brown eyes shadowed by grief. Two trunks, bound and corded with locks and chains, stood in the hall of the small inn where he was housed. The strong scent of tobacco filled the room as if Master Rolfe had just finished smoking a pipe, and the odor jarred memories from their places of safety in Fallon’s soul. Rowtag, his beloved stepfather, had smelled strongly of tobacco, as had half the men in Ocanahonan. ‘Twas the odor of primitive and untamed Virginia, and the recollection brought a lump to Fallon’s throat.

“Fallon Bailie?” Rolfe's eyes swept over Fallon’s lanky form.

Fallon nodded, unable to trust his voice, but Rolfe seemed not to notice. He left the door open and Fallon followed him into the small chamber.

Rolfe launched into an automatic and seemingly oft-repeated sermon on the virtues of raising tobacco in Virginia, but Fallon raised a hand and cut him off. “I know about Virginia,” he said, taking a seat on a bench against the wall.

Rolfe lifted a brow in a silent question, and Fallon quickly shed his doublet and then rolled up his sleeve until the tattoos on his forearms appeared. Visibly shaken, Rolfe shuddered and swallowed. “My wife had similar markings,” he said, his voice thick with clotted emotion. His eyes flew to Fallon’s face again. “But y’are not Indian.”

“I am Virginian.” Fallon briefly told Rolfe the story of Ocanahonan, of Noshi and Gilda, of Smith’s hasty move to transport Fallon out of Jamestown and into an orphanage in England. “John Smith never kept his promise,” Fallon said, staring absently into the fire. “I have tried to reach him, but I do not know how.”

“‘Twould be no use,” John Rolfe said, shaking his head in wonder at the tale. “Smith never mentioned discovering any trace of the lost colony. And though I have often been among the Indians of Virginia, I have never heard the names Gilda and Noshi. But if God is for you—” his eyes met Fallon’s and seemed to see through to the heart of his soul, “—then you shall find them. And I will help, if you come.”

They were simple words, but Fallon heard God’s call in them. The challenge of his life still remained to be met in the forests of the New World.

He stood to his feet and bowed his thanks. “Then my boys and I will see you next year in Virginia,” he said simply.

twenty-three

N
umees danced through the house again, running her dust rag over the gleaming wood of the furniture and testing the softness of the rag rugs beneath her feet. In the year of Pocahontas’s absence, she and Edith had done many things to make the house more of a home for Mistress Rolfe, her husband, and son. Edith had hired a man to build an additional chamber off the front hall so now there were four distinct rooms. ‘Twas the largest house in Jamestown, and Numees was quietly glad that the tobacco from John Rolfe’s plantation had furnished enough lovely things to make the simple house shine with elegance. Pocahontas would be delighted to be home, and Numees could not wait to see her again.

“
Do you think the baby has learned to walk?” Edith asked as she arranged fresh evergreen limbs and flowers over the fireplace mantle. “I know so little of babies.”

The scent of pine filled the room, and the delicious aroma reminded Numees of carefree days when she and Pocahontas had explored the woods as two young girls.
“Of course he will be walking,” Numees answered, tucking her dust rag into the waistband of the kirtle she wore. “He is my nephew, after all, and I walked within four seasons of my birth.”

Edith shot her a questioning glance.
“How do you know that?”

Numees paused.
How did she know that? The fact had sprung unbidden into her mind, as part of a story someone used to tell. She shrugged away the feeling of déjà vu. “I just know, that’s all,” she answered, refusing to feel anything but happy. “You can ask Pocahontas—I mean, Rebecca, yourself. She’ll tell you that I always beat her in our village foot races.”

A horn blew from the direction of the sea, and Edith went to the window and parted the new lace curtains.
“The ship is in,” she whispered, a current of joy in her voice. “Let us pray that last courier was right, and that John and Rebecca have sailed upon this ship.”

Numees shivered with the special tingle of anticipation.
She wanted nothing more than to run out of the house and throw her arms around Pocahontas on the dock. But that would spoil the element of surprise. More than anything, she wanted Mistress Rebecca Rolfe to see that she, Numees, had become English, with proper English clothes, an English accent, and the knowledge necessary to run a tidy English house.

In the weeks following the Rolfes
’ departure for England, Numees had mourned not only for the woman she regarded as a dearly beloved sister, but for their Indian way of life that had vanished like shadows at noonday. But gradually in the months that followed, Numees eased the pain of separation by gradually adopting her elder sister’s beloved English ways. She was now eager to show Pocahontas how well she had adapted to life at Jamestown, and how useful she could be in a civilized household.

Mayhap, Numees admitted as she moved to stand beside Edith at the window, she had been afraid that Pocahontas would return from England and look askance upon Numees
’ stubbornly Indian habits. Rebecca Rolfe and her son would have been surrounded by all things English for more than a year, and John Rolfe had promised that England’s best would be laid at her feet.

So now the home of Master and Mistress Rolfe shone with polish and refinement, ready to receive its family once again.
New furniture had been imported, the house had been swept so that not a speck of dirt lingered in any corner, and delicate lace curtains fluttered at the open windows. Caught up in a flood of sentiment, Numees threw her arms around Edith’s shoulders.

“
Dear me,” Edith gasped, affection shining in her eyes. “Our happiness is truly irrepressible, is it not?”

“
It is,” Numees answered, reclining her head upon Edith’s soft shoulder. “There is naught on earth that could spoil this day.”

Three hours later, Edith Rolfe paced alone in her kitchen, the heaviness in her chest a millstone that threatened to send her crashing to the floor.
John had returned to the house alone, and his news stole the sunlight from the sky and smothered the light of joy in their lives. Mistress Rebecca had died of smallpox, he told them, while they waited for favorable winds to sail home. In his grief, he had left the baby with a relative in England, and had returned to the house at Jamestown only to share the news with Edith and Numees. On the morrow, he planned to journey to his plantation at Henrico. There he would stay, alone with his men and his tobacco fields, far from any sad reminders of his wife.

“
You did not think to bring the baby here?” Numees asked him, quiet authority in her voice. “The child is the grandson of Powhatan, and I am his kinswoman. Why did you leave him in England with strangers?”

“
Yea, John,” Edith answered, her heart welling with emotion. “I have no children, and I could have raised him—”

“
I did not leave him with strangers,” John replied, his brown eyes large and fierce with pain. “They are my kinsmen. I wanted my son to be safe from the dangers of this accursed land—”

“
Safe from the savages, you mean,” Numees finished, lifting her chin in the proud gesture Edith had come to know well. “Have you forgotten that your wife is the daughter of the great chief? Do you not remember that this
accursed
land gave birth to your son, your wife, and the love you shared?” Her voice rose to a fever pitch and her arms stiffened as if she willed herself not to strike him. “Have you forgotten that Pocahontas is the only person on earth I have loved? God may have taken my sister, but in taking her son, you have taken all of her from me!”

Without a further word, the young girl turned and walked to her room and quietly shut the door.
Edith and John sat in silence for some minutes, then they heard the first keening undulations of mourning. The girl’s cries had been as eerie and moving as the wail of a wild animal, and John had left the house immediately, his jaw clenched in pain. Edith alternately wept and held her ears as she paced in the kitchen, unable to prevent the terrible sound from tearing her heart.

John Rolfe spent the night in a public room, but stopped by the house the next morning to promise Edith that he would visit whenever he had business in Jamestown.
“Continue as you have been,” he said, forcing a brief smile as he embraced her in farewell. “And keep Numees with you for as long as she wants to remain. I will rest easier knowing you have company.”

Edith nodded and waved farewell to her brother, then sat in the kitchen and stared moodily at the freshly swept hearth.
She had developed a prosperous little business by baking meat pies for the tavern keeper, but she could not find the energy to rise and set about her work.

Numees did not stir from her room all that morning, and at noon Edith prepared a bowl of cornbread soaked in goat
’s milk and rapped on the girl’s door. “Come now, dear, and have a bite to eat,” she called, injecting a falsely cheerful note into her voice. “I know your heart is heavy, but Mistress Rebecca is in heaven with God, and she wouldn’t want us to mourn for her.”

There was no answer, and Edith pressed her ear to the door to listen for sounds of movement.
“Come now, Numees, and let me talk to you,” she pleaded. “I’ve a strong shoulder if you wish to cry upon it, and I’ve an understanding about these things. She was my sister-in-law, you know. I miss her, too.” She paused. “Can I come in, dear?”

“
Yea,” came the quiet answer.

Edith opened the door, fully expecting to see the girl in tears, disheveled, mayhap still in bed with the covers over her head.
Her smile jelled into an expression of shock when she saw Numees. She stood by the window, her ebony hair plaited in the Indian style she had not favored in more than a year. She wore the simple leather garment she had worn when she first came to live in Jamestown, and she had painted her cheeks, chin, and forehead with black clay. The lovely English bodice, sleeves, and embroidered kirtle lay folded upon a chest against the wall. Edith realized with a start that the girl must have spent her day preparing this costume of mourning.

“
By heaven, what is this?” Edith asked, lowering the bowl to Numees’ bed. “What are you doing, child?”

“
I am a child no longer,” Numees answered, her speech clipped like the savages who half-heartedly mimicked the English. “I became a woman years ago, with the flowering of my red moon. It is time I went back to my people. I can stay with the English no longer.”

Even her posture had changed; gone was the relaxed grace she had developed as she waited for
Pocahontas’s return. Now she stood straight and firm, her arms crossed resolutely across her chest.

“
Numees, dear, what are you thinking?” Edith whispered, moving toward her. She placed her hands on the girl’s thin shoulders and nodded when she saw that tears jeweled her dark lashes. “I know your heart is broken, but you shouldn’t talk of leaving us. What would I do without you?”

“
You have lived alone before,” Numees answered, refusing to look into Edith’s eyes. “Your God will protect you.”

“
And what will God do with you?” Edith asked, struggling to contain her emotions. She placed her hand under Numees’ chin and forced the girl to look into her eyes. “I am sure God wants you to stay with us. Mayhap this sorrow is a test of our faith. Or mayhap there is some secret sin in our lives that God wants us to be rid of—”

“
What sin?” Numees cried, abruptly backing out of Edith’s embrace. “I have followed the teachings of your God. I have not worshipped the heathen idols, I have been baptized; I have learned the prayers and studied the words written in the Holy Book. Every morning and night I pray to this God of yours, and there is naught you can tell me to do that I have not done! Yet the powerful hand of God has torn my loved ones away from me!”

Her agonized cry filled the room, and Edith stepped back, stunned by the vehemence of the girl
’s words. This was a tender age to bear such bitter sorrow, but though Numees was undoubtedly in the throes of fresh grief, ‘twas wrong for her to rebel against God himself.

“
Turn your face from me, if you must,” Edith said, joining her hands in an attitude of dignified hurt. “Turn your face from the English at Jamestown who have sheltered you. Return to the heathens from whence you came. Live in the dirt, lie with any man who approaches you, gnaw upon the fingers of the captives your tribe chooses to torture. But remember, Numees, if you turn your face from God, your very soul will perish in hell.”

A wounded expression filled the girl
’s blue eyes. “I must go,” she whispered, her eyes filling with tears, and before Edith could amend her harsh words, Numees ran past her and left the house, her braid lashing against her back as she ran like a whip of flagellation.

“
Numees, come back!,” Edith called, her voice breaking as she watched the girl go. She leaned against the rough timber of the door frame and dashed bitter tears from her eyes. “What would Rebecca think of you now, Numees?” she cried, her voice carried forward by the wind. “What would your beloved Pocahontas say if she knew you were going back to the heathen savages?”

Numees journeyed upriver with a pair of English traders eager to meet the great chief Powhatan, and the news of her approach reached the chief long before her arrival.
When at last she landed at Weromacomico, Numees found that a great company of warriors, women, and children lined the bank to welcome her home.

She walked immediately to the hut of Powhatan, where she knelt before the man she had known as grandfather and great chief.
He sat on a mat, bare chested and painted in the black clay of mourning. Numees felt her heart sink. Had the chief already heard her sad news?

“
Welcome home, Numees,” he said, his voice cracking with age and weariness. “Have you news of my daughter Matoaka?”

Numees lifted her eyes and felt everything go silent within her when she saw how the chief had aged.
His once powerful body had shriveled like an overripe peach, and his copper skin had toughened into a dry hide, spotted with age and disease. His face was now little more than a complex set of wrinkles with two piercing eyes at the center.

“
Greetings, great chief, the Powhatan of our people,” she said, struggling to maintain control of her voice as she searched for words in the Algonquin tongue. “I alone am returned from the place of the English called Jamestown. The man to whom you gave Matoaka in marriage, John Rolfe, has returned from the land of King James without his wife. He has said that Matoaka died of the pox while waiting to return home.”

Powhatan
’s expression did not change, but Numees saw his entire body sag as if the life force that held him erect had suddenly depleted. His dark eyes wandered away from her face for a moment, then returned. “And the child?” he questioned gently, leaning forward.

She clenched her fists to restrain her anger.
‘Twas a personal insult to her that John Rolfe had left the baby in England, for of all women in the world, she and Pocahontas had been the most closely bound. She was the natural choice to raise Pocahontas’s son, and yet John Rolfe had left the boy with an English kinswoman he might never see again.