1609, Winter of the Dead: A Novel of the Founding of Jamestown (9 page)

Let those be sounds of joy and not of vengeance!
Nat prayed.

They came then to a cabin much longer than the others, and covered with bark instead of the reed mats. Smith, who had regained a straight, confident stride and smile, went into the longhouse with three of the natives while the rest stayed outside and worked at maintaining their composure. The wounded man had torn a strip of his white sleeve and wrapped the arm up. The citizens of the town gathered near, speaking with the native warriors who had brought the men to the village. There was laughter and dramatic waving of hands in describing the encounter. Nat watched them out of the corner of his eye, trying not to seem concerned or afraid, but trying desperately to figure out what they were conveying to each other.

“Are they going to torture us?” Richard whispered.

“Hush!” said Nat. He tried again to decipher the natives' words and motions. It was worthless. The language and the gestures were agonizingly alien.

After nearly twenty minutes, John Smith came back out of the house, led by the natives who had gone in with him. And then came another native, dressed in a mantle of such feathered, pearled, and shelled finery that Nat knew he was a leader. He held his head high, and his eyes were narrowed in an expression of superiority. All the other villagers showed respect for him by stepping back and not looking him in the eye.

They were taken next to a place near the center of the village where woven mats had been placed. The leader, who Smith explained quietly and briefly was the village
weroance,
lowered himself onto a mat at the head of the circle. Only then did everyone else sit. For the next half hour the Englishmen were entertained with strange dancing and singing. While a man beat on a leather instrument and sang, men and women alike took turns dancing before the
weroance
and the visitors. Feet stamped in rhythm with the drumming. Natives in the circle clapped along. The singing was bizarre and hypnotic.

Then food was served, a wide array of cooked fish, beans, berries, fruits, and a bland gruel. Nat, sitting crossed-legged as everyone else, tried to eat, although his stomach would have none of it. It clamped and clenched, trying to throw the morsels back into his mouth along with stinging bile. With great effort he forced the food down. After that, he only pretended to eat. Although the air was cool, sweat beaded on his arms and neck, and he swiped at it anxiously. Next to him, Richard seemed to have as much trouble partaking of the food as Nat.

At last the dancing and music stopped, and the
weroance
stretched and stood. The shells on his mantle clicked heavily. John Smith waited until the
weroance
nodded, and then he, too, stood. He went over and gestured to the
weroance.
None of it made sense to Nat. The
weroance
tilted his head as if considering, then swept his hand out toward the nearest field of crops.

And then Smith pointed at Richard.

Richard gasped.

Nat's heart froze. The fish he had been holding between his teeth was coughed out involuntarily. He spit it into his hand and then wiped it into the dust.

Why is he pointing at Richard?

“Mutton,” Smith called. “Come over here to me.”

The Englishmen looked at Richard. Several seemed as confused as he, but others nodded solemnly in understanding.

“Richard Mutton, come here!”

Richard stood shakily and walked over to John Smith. Was Smith going to introduce Richard to the leader as a gesture of friendship? Was Smith so proud of Richard that he wanted to point him out to the leader? Or, perhaps, had the
weroance,
who had begun to study Richard's pale blond hair with his fingers, decided Richard was some kind of strange creature?

Smith put his hand on Richard's shoulder. Richard looked at the ground.

What is going on?
Nat wondered.

Smith said, “You will stay here, Richard. You have been traded for goodwill and for baskets of food these savages will give us to take back to James Towne.”

Nat's mouth dropped open. He stared at Smith in utter disbelief. Fear had sucked more color from Richard's face than seasickness ever had.

“Men,” Smith said to his soldiers and sailors. “Come with me, and we will be given all we can carry on our shallop. Baskets of all the good things we feasted on this day. It will help keep our settlement alive until our own crops come in good and strong.”

Then Richard grabbed at Smith's sleeve. “Wait! What is this you are doing to me? Have you lost your mind, sir?”

Smith laughed. “Some would say I lost it long ago. Now sit, Richard. These natives will not harm you if you are not obstinate. You are but a boy. Do you really think I brought you to Virginia as a laborer? You are much too small. Be silent and the natives will not find you a threat.” He strode off to join his men, but Richard ran, too, and stopped just in front of the captain. He grabbed Smith's sleeve.

“You cannot leave me, sir! I cannot survive here in this place!”

Smith clenched his jaw. “Get back before I knock you back!”

“Don't leave me!”

“This is the way of explorers, trading boys for food or goodwill,” said Smith. “It has always been so.”

“Please!” Richard's voice cracked and spun into sobs. “I do not know what to do. How should I act, sir?”

Nat's stomach twisted.

A soldier said, “Push the boy aside, Captain. These savages will have little to do with such demonstrations as that boy is having.” The soldier grabbed Richard by the neck and shoved him backward. Smith led the men away. Nat trailed, afraid to look back over his shoulder. Afraid of what he would see in the eyes of the natives and in the eyes of the boy who had made this long, difficult journey with him from London.

“Nat, don't leave me!” he heard Richard cry.

“I have no choice!” Nat said to himself.

And he didn't turn around. The sound of taunting, laughing village children made the hair on his arms stand up. But he marched on.

11

May 24, 1607

We are back at the fort at James Towne. I am again assigned to strip tree bark and to help set the planks in the ground to secure the walls.

But my heart is sick. It is all I can do to keep my mind from the terror I saw in Richard's eyes when we left him behind with those savages. What is happening to him now? What is his fate? And the last words between us were angry. It is too late to take them back, but they haunt me.

Nicholas Skot and Samuel Collier have become skittish. They work at dragging wood from forest to fort but, like Richard, neither is a large boy. I told them what happened to Richard, and they wonder if they will be the next to be traded if there is a need. Back on the ship I would have enjoyed the fear I see in Samuel's eyes, but now it is only a reminder of Richard's fate. Nicholas has told me he will run to the woods before being taken like a sheep to slaughter at the hands of John Smith.

Smith. I know the captain is brave and strong and does what he deems right, but I know now that I do not want to be a man like Smith.

And so when my mind has a moment of rest from thoughts of Richard I wonder—whom should I imitate? Where is a man I can act like? Where is a man I can become?

12

June 9, 1607

Three days ago, as John Smith was out again exploring, we at the James Towne fort were attacked by natives. Such a frightful howl we heard as we stood with our axes and awls, bringing down yet more trees to be split and hauled to the place of construction. We dropped our tools and took up our muskets. Many hadn't time to load the powder and shot before a rain of arrows came down on us. Men dropped like stones, wounded in shoulder and leg and chest. But I was able to fire as the natives came into sight at the edge of the clearing, hitting one native in the throat. He dropped his bow and his knees buckled. His eyes glared at me as he fell dead to the ground. I only remember one other man with such hate and fear in his eyes, and that was a convicted traitor in London as he was taken away on a wagon to be drawn and quartered.

Two hundred warriors there were, according to Edward Wingfield. More than all of us together. Yet the roar of our muskets scared them off and we were left to tend our injured men.

I asked Edward Pising why we would be attacked. As many others, I had thought we had established goodwill. But Pising said he did not know. Perhaps this was another village whom we had not appeased. Perhaps we had done something offensive which the savages had witnessed while peering at us from the forest.

“Who can know their minds? Surely not us,” he said. “And this shows we can in no way trust them as Smith is bound to think at times.”

Now, with some bandaged and others healing in their tents, we work faster than before. We must get our fort constructed.

13

August 19, 1607

“T
HE CROPS WE'VE
raised are deplorable,” said Jehu as he and Nat jammed their shovels into the soil within the palisade walls of James Towne fort. The man's black hair was stringy and his eyes pinched with worry. He had also lost a great deal of weight since May, as had all the other settlers. “What seed we brought from England was half moldy when we put it into the ground. We'll be lucky if we see any fall vegetables or wheat at all.”

“How do you know so much?” Nat asked. “You are a shareholder who has come to Virginia to find gold. Gentlemen don't know about crops and digging.”

Jehu tossed a shovelful of soil out onto the nearby pile. He and Nat were digging a new well. The first one had not provided enough water for the settlement. This second one would hopefully give enough fresh water for the men and animals and crops alike. The water in the James River was brackish, laced with salt and grit. Some men, in moments of desperate thirst, had drunk of the river and found themselves seriously ill or dead.

“I was not always a gentleman,” said Jehu. “My fortune came from good planning and a little bit of luck. My parents were farmers from Scotland, but I learned merchanting when I went to live with my uncle in London at fourteen. I have been successful and lucky. Yes, I want gold. But I want to survive to enjoy the riches, and that will take the efforts of us all.”

Nat nodded, and slammed his shovel into the growing hole of the well.

The Virginia summer sun above was barely tolerable. No longer were breezes fresh and the air agreeable as they had been in May. Days and nights alike were hot and oppressive. Insects sucked blood of the men, leaving many unwell. Some had died from the bites of these insects; other had perished from eating spoiled food left from the voyage and drinking the river water. A total of twenty-seven men were dead. Even Bartholomew Gosnold, the captain of the
Godspeed,
was so ill with an intestinal disorder many doubted he would recover.

Food was growing scarce; the men had eaten adequately the first weeks, dining on the remaining victuals brought from England. Now deer and squirrels were killed by those who could hunt, and the river gave up fish, turtles, and crabs to those who could gather them, but there was not enough to feed everyone. The garden outside the James Towne fortress was tended regularly, commoners and laborers hoeing, watering, and keeping away as many scavenging animals and burrowing insects as possible. But the crops that had come up were meager. Beans were tiny and few; peas were the same. Cabbages and squash were riddled with an unknown blight. The wheat crop was scrawny. Come autumn, life would be harder still, with little food in store.

If the gentlemen would learn to hunt and garden like commoners,
Nat had written in his journal two nights prior,
then there might be enough food. But they are worthless. They complain and eat, no better than leeches. There is even talk that our council president Edward Maria Wingfield has been pilfering food from the storehouse to feed himself and his friends. I believe it may be true, as he seems less thin than the rest of us. Lazy, selfish man! But how long can the storehouse feed him before there is nothing left? He will have a hard lesson once his own belly screams at him. Indeed, all these gentlemen have hard lessons to learn if they are to survive more than this summer!

It is best for me to watch out for myself, for if I depend on others, I shall surely starve.

Jehu and Nat worked another few hours on the well, then took a break. Nat put his helmet on his head and picked up his shirt and musket. He went out through the fort's gate, along one of the grassy pathways, past the fenced gardens and down to the river's edge. He sat on a favorite stone and slipped his shirt on. The fabric made him sweat more, but at least it kept most of the biting flies off his skin. Gazing out across the wide stretch of water, Nat thought about many things. As always, Richard came to mind first.

I wonder if he is alive. Perhaps he is truly safe. I'll never know. There was nothing I could do. If I'd come to Richard's aid, what might have happened to me? As I had to be silent when at John Smith's court of inquiry, I had to be silent at Richard's trading.

Natives, whom Smith called Powhatans after the name of the chief Powhatan of all the native villages in the near and far reaches of this land, had attacked off and on through the summer, but no attack was as severe as the one in June. This had encouraged the men to hasten the completion of the fort. The soldiers set cannons atop bulwarks at the corners of the fort. The Powhatans were, it seemed, a warring group of people with minds impossible for Nat to understand. They appeared friendly at times, then bloodthirsty at others.

Smith had at last gained his seat on the council because of his ability to deal with the unpredictable Powhatans. If it weren't for him, Nat was certain that the whole settlement would be dead or enslaved by now. But Nat no longer trusted Smith on a personal level.