Jamestown (The Keepers of the Ring) (48 page)

Despite Gilda
’s resolutions, ‘twas impossible not to miss the healing house at Jamestown during the cold winter months. Though that house had not been plush, life in the Indian community was decidedly harsh. Gilda worked all day with the women, storing and preparing food, and spent hours bending over the stone-lined fire pits as she cooked steaming pottages of vegetables and venison. Occasionally she was called by the conjurors in help with healing, and while the priests and conjurors chanted and blew smoke over the sick patient, Gilda quietly lifted prayers to the only God she knew.

She kept to herself as much as possible, aware that most of the women and many of the warriors were suspicious of her sudden reappearance.
The children, as always, were wary of her blue eyes, and scattered at her approach like leaves before an angry wind. But she did what was expected of her without comment or complaint, knowing that in faithful service alone could she convince Opechancanough that she was worthy to resume her rightful place in the clan.

Her nightmares did not trouble her in the Powhatan
village, for she rarely rested well enough to dream. Each night, blind with fatigue, she crawled into the crowded hut where she had been grudgingly welcomed. A thick cloud of smoke hovered at the top of the domed structure, making it impossible to stand up and breathe at the same time, and though a fire burned constantly at the center of the dwelling, both moonlight and the bitter breath of winter came in through a thousand cracks in the thatched walls and roof. If she was fortunate enough to sleep near the fire, whichever side of her body faced the flames roasted as she slept. On most nights, though, she tried to ignore the stranger who pressed against her and huddled into her blankets as her teeth chattered.

When a heavy snow fell in January, the children used it to build an insulating wall around each hut. The warmth of the fires inside soon turned the snow into ice, and under the magic workings of winter the huts glistened like Edith’s clear crystal teacups turned upside down.

Thoughts of Edith made Gilda
’s throat ache with regret. She couldn’t deny that she had abandoned Edith and Wart to a difficult work. If, as Opechancanough insisted, clothed men were continuing to pour into Jamestown and the surrounding areas, then the healing house was certain to be crowded.

Memories of the house often filled her with a longing to turn back, but by the sheer force of will Gilda concentrated on the work before her and thrust recollections of Edith, Wart, and Brody from her mind.
She was not English, she was a Powhatan. Her tattoos indicated her lineage, despite the symbol of the cross within them, and with the Indians she would make her forever home.

If only she could forget Fallon so easily
. . .

Fallon splayed his legs to maintain his balance as the ship rocked in the rough water off the docks of Jamestown.
“Twenty men are left below,” the captain said, jerking his thumb toward the narrow stairs that led to the filthy area below deck. “I unloaded a hundred men at Elizabeth City, and a hundred fifty here at Jamestown. But the lot remaining is too far gone to be bought by anybody; none of the planters upriver would take ‘em. So I asks you, Master Bailie, what I am supposed to do? By the sword of St. Denis, I’m of certain not about to take the poxy lot back to England!”

“
That won’t be necessary,” Fallon said, deliberately taking a deep breath of fresh air before descending the companionway. “That’s why we have a hospital.”

Each time Fallon entered a ship he thought he witnessed the most pitiful conditions known to man, but each galleon of late had been far worse than the one before.
In months past the labor merchants had taken to crowding increasing numbers of passengers into holds designed solely for inhuman cargo, and Fallon now found even women and children crammed into torturous spaces too small to sustain life for any length of time.

The horrible odors of raw sewage, vomit, and assorted filth assailed him as he began his descent, but he halted when the captain tugged on his sleeve.
Grateful for a moment to delay his errand, Fallon looked up. “Whatever happened to that beautiful young miss who used to tend folks in that house of yours?” the captain asked. “She tended me herself the time I was down with scurvy last summer.”

“
Gilda,” Fallon said, looking away from the captain’s yellowed eyes. For a moment he imagined her face in a ruffled cat’s paw on the sea, then he smiled ruefully and turned again to the seaman. “She’s been gone for nearly a year. She’s gone inland, and I don’t think she’ll be returning to the house.”

“‘
Tis too bad,” the captain answered, shaking his head. “But she’ll be busy if she’s still wanting to take care of the sick. The savages are all dying of the pox, you know.”

“
Nay,” Fallon answered, a dark premonition holding him on the stairs. “I didn’t know. There is sickness in the Powhatan villages?”

“
Aye,” the captain answered, his heavy cheeks falling in worried folds over his collar. “Hardly an Indian to be found in the woods or in the smaller villages. They lie sick and dying on the ground by the river, or in the shallows where they drown trying to ease their fever—”

Fallon swallowed against the unfamiliar constriction in his throat and forced himself to continue on down the stairs.

In the late summer Gilda approached the chief with another request to marry, and two months later he sent for her.

“
You have done well, Kimi,” Opechancanough said, giving her a restrained smile. “The women in your hut speak highly of you. And you have passed eighteen years.”

“
Yea,” she whispered, wondering if he would finally keep his word.

The chief leaned forward, the firelight giving his face a ghostly aspect.
“It pleases me to grant your request.” He lifted his hand toward a tall warrior seated behind him. “Anakausuen is a fine worker,” he said, scanning her face for signs of resistance. “He has watched you and agrees to take you as his wife. You will live in his village.”

Gilda stepped back, momentarily stung.
She had seen the warrior enter the village days before, but she had never imagined that Opechancanough might send her to one of the other villages. Some were far away, a month’s journey from Jamestown even by canoe . . .

Anakausuen stood and came toward her; she met his appraising eyes with her own.
The chief’s choice had the clear, unlined face of a youth, and muscles bulged and slid under his bronze-red skin as he crossed his arms and studied her. He wore a warrior’s breechcloth about his loins and a fur mantle over his broad back; rough black hair tumbled past his shoulders. Indomitable pride was chiseled into his handsome face, and Gilda realized that Anakausuen did not look like the type of man who would allow thoughts of another to fill his wife’s head.
Good.

“
Our chief is wise,” she murmured to Opechancanough. She bowed to her affianced husband as tradition demanded, then left the chief’s dwelling. They would not actually be married until her husband led her into his hut, and she was not sure when they would leave for his village. But by insisting upon her rights to create a family within the Powhatan tribe, she knew she had done the thing most likely to keep her thoughts forever from Fallon Bailie.

Thirty-seven

A
nakausuen and his men had come to Opechancanough’s village to trade, so Gilda bundled her share of supplies and goods upon her back as she joined the group of half a dozen men who left Weromacomico. Her intended husband said little to her on the three-day journey to the village of Ramushonnouk, nor did he move to touch her as the party lay down to sleep at night by the comforting light of a campfire.

They entered Ramushonnouk on the morning of the fourth day, and Gilda realized with pleased surprise that her future husband was a highly-respected warrior.
Friends greeted him with eager embraces, women blushed and twittered when he approached, and children scampered and squealed for his attention like puppies eager for a juicy bone. Again, the goodness of Opechancanough had proven Fallon wrong, for he would not have given her such a worthy husband unless he held her in esteem and affection.

Distracted by the sights around her, Gilda followed in the wake of Anakausuen’s retinue and nearly bumped into his broad back when he stopped in front of a hut. The children giggled at her confusion, and Gilda realized that Anakausuen had turned because this dwelling was his. ‘Twas time for them to join in marriage.

She blushed to the roots of her hair and let the pack fall from her back.
Two women lifted it eagerly away and brought it to Anakausuen, who untied the leather bindings and unwrapped the fur bundle. From it he pulled forth a knife in a handsome leather sheaf and a string of bright yellow beads.

Almost reverently Anakausuen lifted the beads and gravely slipped them over Gilda’s head. “I take you to be my wife,” he announced in an awed, husky whisper. The surrounding warriors shouted their approval, and Gilda tried to inject enthusiasm into her smile as she gave the expected response: “I accept you as my husband.”

Then Anakausuen lifted the grass mat that served as the door to the hut and pulled Gilda inside.

‘Twas no mystery what married men and women did to enjoy each other, for Gilda had lived most of her life in a community where up to twenty people bedded down in a single hut. She did not doubt that Reverend Buck would be horrified to realize how open the Indians were in expressing their marital pleasures, but Gilda had discovered the great gulf that existed between English pronouncements and English actions. While they congratulated themselves on their recently-deceased virgin queen and pledged to honor the precepts of Christian morality, most of the men aboard ships from the Caribbean arrived infested with venereal diseases and vermin that had never been seen among the people of the Powhatan.

She and her husband stood alone in this hut, however, and Anakausuen stared at her, his eyes glinting with pure masculine interest.
He raked her with a fiercely possessive look, then put out a tentative finger and touched the bridge of her nose. Tenderly, gently, he moved it across the wings of her nostrils and over her cheek, then down to her lips.

She bent her head humbly before him and tried to rein in her rebellious mind.
Why did she think of Fallon now?

Her husband stepped closer, cradling her head in his hand as he kissed her cheek and forehead and eyes and lips.
A protest sprang to her lips but she bit it back.
This is what you wanted, an Indian husband. This is the life you have chosen.

His hand crept up the wide fullness of her sleeve and the warmth of his palm against her shoulder seemed to send fire though every nerve in her body.
Bending down, he lightly pressed his lips to hers, and Gilda realized that the warmth of his body had risen not from passion, but fever.

“
Anakausuen,” she whispered, placing her hands on his shoulder and gently pushing him away. “You are ill.”

He mumbled and reached for her again, but she propelled him down to the furs piled on the floor, pressing her hand against his burning forehead.
“Name of a name, what a fever is this!” He did not resist her ministration, but sighed in relief and closed his eyes as she soothed his skin with her cool hands. “I will fetch water and herbs,” she said, whispering in his ear. “I am a good healer, my husband. I will make you well.”

He said nothing, but drifted away in weariness.
Gilda slipped through the doorway to beg the village conjuror for the medicines she needed.

Anakausuen was not the only warrior affected with fever.
Many others fell ill that same day, and their stubborn fevers would not break despite the frantic chanting of the conjuror and the cups of tea Gilda held to their lips. On the third day of fever, Gilda stiffened in horror when she looked at the strong body of her husband and saw that his bronzed skin had erupted in small red spots. Great wailing came from other huts as entire families were affected, and the conjuror danced himself into exhaustion as he pleaded with the gods of wind, rain, and fire to send healing to his people.

Gilda prayed to her God, too, as on the sixth day the small red spots grew into angry, pus-filled blisters.
Her robust husband, who could doubtless walk through burning coals without flinching, wailed in misery as he thrashed upon the furs she had spread under him. Every inch of his body was affected with the painful boils, particularly the soles of his hands and feet. He could not walk, nor could he handle any object without extreme pain. There was no comfortable position in which he could rest, no fur soft enough to ease his suffering.

One by one, others of the village came down with fever and the spots until only Gilda and a few of the children remained free from illness.
Gilda directed the children to help her move the sick into two adjacent huts, one for women, one for men, then she sent the healthy children to a third hut, away from contagion. She nursed the feeble ones as best she could, then sat and prayed for her patients as Edith had taught her: “Hear me, Almighty and most merciful God and Savior; extend thy accustomed goodness to these who are grieved with sickness. Sanctify, I beseech thee, this thy fatherly concern to them; that the sense of their weakness may add seriousness to their repentance: That, if it be thy good pleasure to restore them to their former health, they may lead the residue of their life in thy fear and to thy glory . . .