Jamestown (The Keepers of the Ring) (41 page)

Fallon sank to the floor and slipped his arm around the stricken girl.
“Were you alone?”

She shook her head.
“Nay. But ‘twas dark. And I had to get into the black water and walk. I was so frightened.”

“
Where did you go?”

“
The wall.” Her voice broke, and she buried her head in her hands, weeping. Through the dim shadows Edith saw Fallon give Kimi a look that was compassionate, troubled, and anxious.

“
You saw a wall? A palisade?”

“
I don’t know,” she wailed, throwing back her head. “I ran away. The wall came toward me, and I ran back to the water but it got deeper and deeper and I knew I could not swim . . .”

Fallon made gentle shushing sounds as he pulled the weeping girl into his arms.
After several minutes, Edith saw Kimi relax, then her eyes closed. Like a loving father, Fallon lowered Kimi to her pillow, then covered her with the crumpled quilt.

He stood, then his eyes met hers.
“She does this often?

“
Often enough,” Edith replied, propping her head on her hand. “In the morning, she’ll remember naught of it. But I can always tell when she’s had a bad dream, for there’ll be circles under her eyes.”

He sat on the edge of the hearth.
“Could something be responsible for her dreams? Losing a patient, mayhap? A certain food?”

Edith shook her head, considering whether or not she should share her suspicions, then she blurted out the truth:
“She has them occasionally, to be sure, but she has the worst dreams on the days you visit us, Master Fallon.”

He blanched in surprise, then bit his lip and stood.
“I’ll leave the light burning,” he said, leaving her alone with the sleeping girl.

The sharp December morning was wind-whipped and bitter cold, so when a knock sounded at the door Kimi hurried to answer it, afraid Fallon had been carrying a sick boy since dawn.
After opening the door, she took a quick breath of utter astonishment when she recognized the finely-dressed gentleman who stood before her: “Governor Argall!”

“
I give you good morrow, miss,” he said, formally tipping his hat. “May I come in?”

She nodded in astonished silence and moved back so that Governor Argall could pass into the room.
She had never seen the man at such a close distance. He wore a fine silk doublet with what seemed an obscene amount of lace at his neck and wrists, and his breeches, gloves, and stockings looked warm and new. With a single fluid motion he untied and slung his cloak from his shoulders, handing it to her as if she should know what to do with it. She took it into her arms and marveled at its dense weight and warmth. Oh, to have blankets out of this lovely wool!

Edith came around the corner with a chamber pot in her hands and gave a timid squeak at the sight of such an esteemed personage in her keeping room.
“Governor Argall!” she exclaimed, nearly dropping the porcelain pot at the governor’s feet. She darted around the corner and hid the unmentionable object, then returned to the front hall. After curtseying lightly, she took the cloak from Kimi’s arms and hung it expertly on a peg near the door.

“
What brings you to us, Governor?” she asked, pinching her lower lip with her teeth. She fluttered her nervous hands toward a bench near the fireplace, and the governor sat down stiffly, his hands upon his knees.

“
I heard that Fallon Bailie is expected here today,” he said, moving his fingers restlessly as if he hated to be kept waiting. “I need a private audience with him.”

“
We never know when Master Bailie will appear,” Edith said, running her hand over her hair. “It could be today, or tomorrow—”

“
I have it on good authority that he hath entered the city today,” the governor barked, pulling back his shoulders. “Now, if you could be so good as to get me something to drink—”

“
Right away, Governor,” Edith answered, scurrying into the kitchen. “We have a wonderful peach cider put away . . .”

After seeing that the governor was merely a man, and not a very impressive one, Kimi
’s trepidation vanished. She tiptoed quietly to the bench across from him and sat down, studying intently. He had to be aware of her gaze, for his fingers continued their restless drumming against his bony knees, but he cleared his throat and took a sudden interest in the fire behind him.

There was something familiar about the man
’s graveled face and slicked-back hair, and Kimi double-checked her memory. “Governor Argall?” she whispered, more to herself than to the visitor. “Samuel Argall?”

“
That’s right,” the man said, turning to her.

And then she remembered.
He had been Captain Samuel Argall when she first met him aboard the Treasurer, and he had smiled and informed her and Pocahontas that they could not return to their tribe. He had not been harsh, but seemed to think that the feelings of two Indian girls were of no importance whatsoever . . .

“
What could you possibly have to do with Fallon Bailie?” she wondered aloud.

He looked at her then, and she noted an odd mingling of wariness and impatience in his eyes.
“Excuse me,” he said, aligning his face in a forbidding expression, “but I said I wanted a private conversation with Fallon Bailie.”

A grudging smile played across her face and she stood to go tend the quartet of sick boys in her room.
Talk to Fallon about whatever you want, she thought. But within the thin walls in this house, no conversation is truly private.

She heard Fallon
’s distinctive knock and the creak of the front door a few moments later. “Hallo ladies,” he called, his voice snapping with joy as he entered the house. “Know you what day it is? I’d nearly forgotten, but ‘tis Christmas—”

He broke off
, and Kimi knew he had seen the governor. Smiling at the boys in her care, she laid her finger across her lips and pressed her ear to the flimsy door that separated her from the keeping room.

“
And a happy Christmas to you, Governor,” Fallon said, speaking in a calm, neutral voice. “What brings you to this house?”

“
Trouble,” the governor growled. “Complaints. Y’are giving the planters a hard time, Fallon Bailie, and they are keeping me awake at night with their reports.”

“
Ah, the planters,” Fallon replied easily, closing the door behind him. “A worrisome group they are, Governor; they think gardening is living on the edge of life. But what reports are these? I have brought sick boys to care, escorted lost men through the wilderness—”

“
You know what reports,” the governor snapped. “Since when it is a crime for a master to strike an insolent servant? Yet you would make it so. And how can planters feed their servants venison and milk when they are starving themselves?”

“
I’m sure these things have been exaggerated,” Fallon answered, his voice soft and eminently reasonable. “My charges, sir, have been concerned only with unjust and unwarranted punishment, not proper discipline. And never yet have I seen a plantation owner with the ghost of hunger in his eyes.”

“
Be that as it may, we are struggling, sir, to build a prosperous life for one and all in this colony. ‘Tis difficult enough to do so without your interference upon the part of men who have signed lawful indenture contracts modeled after those of our fatherland—”

“
I am well aware of the system of indenture in England,” Fallon answered crisply. “And though my master was not kind, he was not unreasonable. I survived despite his lack of feeling and kindness, and I wish to know of certain that my students will survive at least as well here in Virginia. I am not asking for extravagance, sir, but I demand that even indentured servants receive the justice due to every man created in the image of God.”

A cold wind blew past the house with soft moans, then the bench creaked as the governor stood.
Kimi knelt and pressed her eye to the keyhole in the iron lock.

“
Very well,” Governor Argall answered, standing before Fallon with his arms folded tight as a gate. “I have learned that you will not leave Virginia until you have found a boy reported to be missing among the Tripanick Indians. I am prepared to offer you an escort of twenty armed men, boats, and provisions enough to take you into Tripanick lands. Find the boy you seek and take him back to England with you. But you must begin your journey on the morrow, or my offer is void.”

Kimi stiffened as she held her breath.
Surely Fallon would accept the governor’s offer, for his work with his students was at best a half-way measure. They lost a boy for every two they saved, and there was no guarantee the boy they saved today would not be stricken with disease on the morrow.

She shivered.
God would lead Fallon to Noshi as surely as he had found her, then the two brothers would go to England and leave her alone. They would be two sides of a triangle, forever missing the third piece because she could not embrace what Fallon had told her of her past—

“
Thank you, sir, but I will find the boy I seek on my own terms.”

She bit her thumb, unwilling to believe what she had heard.

“Y’are a fool, Fallon Bailie. There are men who would give their lives to leave this place.”

“
Then let them leave.” Fallon waved his hand toward the empty mattresses stacked against the wall. “As you can see, I have work to do here.”

The governor shook his head in stern disapproval, flung his cloak across his shoulders, and slammed his way out of the house.

Disturbed by reports of un-Christian and harsh behavior in the colony, Governor Samuel Argall decreed that all who failed to attend Sunday church service would be imprisoned in the guardhouse, “lying neck and heels in the corps of the guard the night following and be a slave the week following.” He further ordered that dancing, fiddling, card playing, hunting, and fishing were forbidden on the Lord’s Day, but nursing, if a life demanded it, was permitted.

Kimi could never recall going to church, so she looked forward to her first visit.
The long, narrow chapel in the center of the clearing outside Jamestown fort was the only brick building in the settlement, and its tall tower lifted her eyes to the sky. With Mistress Rolfe firmly at her side, Kimi passed easily through the crowd of admiring men and took a seat upon a solid wooden bench at the front of the building.

Reverend Buck smiled at the women in greeting, then led his greatly expanded congregation in songs that rang familiarly in Kimi
’s mind. And when he read from the Bible she felt a warm glow spread from her heart to her face as his words rang over the assembled gathering:

“
I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. But he that is a hireling, and not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth: and the wolf catcheth them, and scattereth the sheep. The hireling fleeth, because he is a hireling, and careth not for the sheep. I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine. As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father, and I lay down my life for the sheep. And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd.”

‘
Twas as if the voice of God spoke directly to her heart through Reverend Buck’s words, and of a sudden Kimi’s mind blew open. God had sent Fallon as a shepherd, she and Noshi were the sheep to be found and guarded. Guilt avalanched over her, for she had long denied the truth of Fallon’s words. But in the face of his dedication to his task and the purity of his goodness, she knew he had spoken and dealt with her truly.

Her hand trembled slightly as the congregation bowed their heads for prayer.
The dark veil at the back of her mind rippled, and in that moment she knew ‘twas useless to resist the truth that she was indeed Gilda Colman.

Thirty-three

B
one-numbing cold gripped the low-lying settlement throughout the months of January and February, and though the wind rushed out to lash the settlers with the threat of snow in its breath, none fell. Not once in forty days did even a sliver of blue sky dared to peer through the heavenful of gray scud, and as Fallon’s boys died in the healing house at Jamestown, Gilda felt her heart grow as gray as the sky.

One evening Fallon came to the house with news that the governor had pressed the ruling council to petition London for another hundred boys to work in the tobacco fields.

“
Nay, Fallon,” Gilda whispered, thinking of the stream of sick boys that would fill the house.

“
The letter has already been sent and received,” Fallon answered, watching her in a way that made her feel like some form of ministering angel. “I’m sorry, Gilda, but I have no influence with the governor—”