Raleigh's Page (15 page)

On the return, they kept to the right. By the time they should have reached the entrance, their torches were almost spent. Somewhere they’d missed a turn. They were lost! Andrew’s stomach twisted.

The captain swore as he grabbed one of the torches and started back. It was just a few paces to where the cave divided and then divided again. He stopped. “Which way did we come?” he yelled. No one answered.

Andrew was panting. This was worse than being in the well.

“Ask him,” Sky whispered, pointing to the dog.

“Back, Salt!” Andrew ordered. “Go back!”

Sniffing carefully, the dog led them. Then the last torch guttered out, and they found themselves in utter darkness. It felt like being buried alive in crow feathers.

Andrew reached for the dog’s tail. “Take hands,” he called.

Sky took his.

“Go, Salt!”

At last, after what seemed like hours of crawling and sweating, they saw daylight. The dry fresh air was the sweetest Andrew had ever breathed.

At the cave mouth, Mr. Harriot sorted the chips of rock he’d taken.

“Is there gold?” the captain asked.

“Limestone,” Mr. Harriot said, pointing to one pile. “Good for mortar. And here, rag—good building stone. And this one, iron.”

“Is there ore?” the captain asked again, louder.

“Iron, yes,” said Mr. Harriot, looking up at him without expression. “Gold, no.”

32

F
ROM THE
F
ORT

24 August, 1585

Dear Family and Rebecca,

The Tyger sails for England tomorrow. I set the leg of the sailor who brings this. He does not limp! He will tell you how it is with us. I am well. We’ve had little illness, and none of the company has died. Food is short, though; no one grows fat.

I think Virginia could feed all England. Without plow or manure, the Indian women get good crops. When a field wears out, the men clear forest to make new.

We want to buy a worn-out field to experiment, but no one understands what we mean by “buying.” Manteo, our Indian friend, says no one owns land. He says you can only own a thing you can carry, like the earring he got from the Queen.

Mornings, I work as apprentice to the carpenters. The men say Father taught me well. We build boats and wagons and improve the fort. Parts of it wash away in every gale. Our captain says Virginia storms do us worse than Spanish cannon ever could. The Indians do not know wheels. Men drag their loads on long poles.

I go everywhere with Mr. Harriot. At night I write the day’s journal as he directs. I tend the apples and the English seeds we planted. The apples have taken and most of the seeds thrive too, but we arrived too late to get any crop.

No one is idle. We muster to trumpet calls at dawn and drill to fight Spaniards and natives. To Captain Lane, both are enemy and we are troops. So far he’s kept us safe and in order with promise of the lash and worse for those who would disobey. “Idle hands are the devil’s playthings” is his rule. Sir Walter would deal kinder with the Indians, I think.

An Indian boy my age teaches me medicine plants and how to track, trap, and weave with grass. I am learning the Algonquin tongue. They have no writing. When a snake struck the captain, Sky saved him with a root.

Some of the chiefs wear pearls. This small one is for Rebecca. Manteo found it in an oyster. The Indians weave the cloth it comes in from silk grass colored with the juice of a blood-colored root the Indians call puccoon. We’ve found no pearls in all the oysters we’ve opened. I am sick of oysters. We eat them roasted, raw, and boiled as we have no fat for frying. The best fat here is bear’s, sweeter than any English butter. To bite into a bad oyster is awful. We have opened and eaten so many, our paths in the fort are paved with oyster shells.

I miss you very much, and the dogs. The Indians have dogs, but they are not pets. Sometimes they eat them.

Andrew

33

M
R
. H
ARRIOT
I
S
S
ICK

Virginia’s fall color was brighter than England’s—vivid oranges, yellows, reds, and purples. The autumn rain was soft and fragrant. In the damp, the fallen leaves made a sweet smell like malting ale. Flights of white geese came over and rested on the marsh, raucousing day and night. For a week the explorers and Indians fattened on roast goose.

It got dark earlier and the sun rose later now. Some mornings there was frost. The men wore wool caps to bed. Andrew slept in his cap for America.

He was spending all his free time with Sky now. The boys spoke English and Algonquin together, each teaching the other. Andrew’s world was as strange to Sky as Sky’s was to Andrew. Andrew had come to feel closer to Sky than he had to his best friend at school, because each protected the other.

Mr. Harriot’s illness began with a cough and sore throat, then turned to a raging fever as he choked on his phlegm.

Captain Lane advised bleeding. He avoided the patient.

Andrew’s stomach heaved when Tremayne cut a vein in Mr. Harriot’s wrist to release a cup of hot blood. The boy gave him purges to empty his bowels. The patient turned gray. By the hour he wasted away as they watched.

“He’s dying,” Andrew said, choking back tears. “We need help.” He clenched his fists and said a private prayer.

Tremayne asked Manteo and Sky what to do. That afternoon, the two Indians rowed over to the mainland. They returned after supper, saying Mr. Harriot should go to the priests.

He was now delirious.

“Shall we take you to the Indians?” Tremayne asked.

Mr. Harriot’s eyelids fluttered. He made no sound. Then his lips formed what looked like “Yes.”

Tremayne went to the captain. “Sir, he wishes to go to the Indians.”

“Madness!” Captain Lane exclaimed. “Bleed him again! Purge him! Sweat him! In all events, keep him from the savages! In his weakness he’ll reveal our secrets.”

“What secrets?” Tremayne wondered aloud. “That we’re hungry? Who doesn’t know that?”

The captain was readying a group to hunt on the mainland. They would be gone for days. Manteo and Wanchese were to lead as scouts.

Manteo couldn’t be found when the hunting party gathered at the boats, so they left without him. When the hunters were well across the channel, he appeared.

As Andrew and Tremayne gently rolled Mr. Harriot onto a litter, the tall man groaned. They carried him to the shore. He was surprisingly light. Manteo had a boat the Indians had made by hollowing out a large log with fire and scraping. Sky stood in the water to push them off, then vaulted himself in.

They paddled to a small village Andrew had never seen. The priests were gathered around their sacred fire pit. The one who led them wore a short cloak of bright blue feathers sewed thick together. He gave Manteo a look and nodded at Andrew.

Andrew whispered to Manteo, “What is his name?”

“‘He Who Sees Beyond,’” he replied. “He is my brother—Sky’s father.”

The priests wore scraps of decorated hide and pouches of colored leather at the waist. Their faces were painted with a paste of red sumac and the blood-colored root, their chests and thighs daubed with yellow clay and dots of blue. One wore the wings of a bird over his ear; another had wrapped his head with a band of snake and weasel skins woven together and crowned with feathers.

Mr. Harriot was unconscious. The priests pointed to show that his litter should be placed close to the fire.

They motioned Tremayne and Andrew back as they closed in around the litter, swaying together and chanting over the body. He Who Sees Beyond waved a clutch of feathers and a writhing copper-headed snake. His deputy shook a carved stick topped with a small white skull. Sky joined the apprentices as they beat drums and shook rattles.

As the chanting and dancing picked up, He Who Sees Beyond sprinkled water on Mr. Harriot. Then he laid flowers on him. The others did the same, until the Englishman’s body was covered with dried gray blossoms. They circled the fire, chanting louder and louder until they were all howling and dancing. They panted and sweated in the heat and effort. Their eyes were open wide, glazed, unseeing.

As the fire went down, they slowed. Each in turn then emptied the contents of his pouch on the coals. A thick blue smoke rose, tobacco and some other herb Andrew had not smelled before.

The priests fanned this smoke over Mr. Harriot’s body, moaning low together as if singing a lullaby. Some of the smoke drifted over Andrew. Suddenly he felt as if he were floating.

When the fire was out, the priests carried the litter to the house of the dead and shoved it in.

Andrew felt like he’d been kicked in the stomach.

“Manteo!” he cried. “Is he dead?” The boy was weeping.

“Wait!” said Manteo. He was like one in a trance.

“Is he alive?”

Manteo nodded slowly. The smoke had affected him too.

“What did they smoke him with?”

Manteo shook his head. “Go now,” he said. “Come tomorrow afternoon. I will watch him with Sky.”

“What will Captain Lane do when he finds out?” Andrew asked as he and Tremayne rowed back to the fort together.

“Depends on whether Mr. Harriot is alive or dead, doesn’t it?” Tremayne replied. “We’ve done what we could, and what we’ve done is right!”

When they returned the next afternoon, Mr. Harriot was lying in the sun. He was still on the stretcher, but he was conscious. His fever had broken. Manteo and Sky sat beside him.

Andrew whispered, “Thank you. Your people saved him.”

Manteo nodded but said nothing.

“What did they smoke him with?” Andrew asked again. “And the dried flowers they put over his body—what were they?”

Manteo shook his head.

“In the spring I’ll show you,” Sky promised later. “The flowers and the seeds they threw on the fire are from the same plant. It is the priest’s chant, though—their prayer—that gives it power.”

“Why do you teach me these things when your uncle will not?” Andrew asked.

“Because we are brothers. You teach me what you call your science; I teach you ours. We can do much together!”

Mr. Harriot lay weak for days. He remembered nothing.

The captain asked no questions. Somehow he’d got word. That night he read aloud to the company from Saint Mark about men casting out devils, speaking with new tongues, and taking up serpents.

34

C
HRISTMAS
R
EVELS AT
F
ORT
R
OANOKE

The winter moon was like a pearl in blue velvet, bright against soft, large and indistinct, charmed. The first dustings of snow revealed every path. Seeds, dried leaves, branches, and twigs appeared like sea wrack on the white crust. In the clear, slanted morning light, larch needles in bared places came up the color of old pottery. As the woods grew lighter without the leaves, the spruce, rhododendron, and pines glowed green. The hideout Andrew had built with Sky was visible to everyone now. The men said it was a bear’s nest.

There was still some cricket song, some gold and yellow in the woods; then it was winter proper. Two weeks before Christmas, a major blowing storm broke off branches and left deep drifts.

The air took on a dry spice smell as the storm cleared and the sky turned rose. While the company shoveled, made snowmen, and tossed snowballs, Andrew helped the carpenters build simple two-man sleds—heavy crude planks with wooden runners. There was no steering them—you just aimed and went. The men trooped out to the gully to race, yelling and laughing as they shot down the steep that got slicker and slicker with every run until it was sheer ice and there were crashes and bruises. That night they all sang songs and danced jigs in front of the fort’s great stone fireplace. Firewood was one thing they had plenty of.

Andrew wore Pena’s cap for America day and night now. Every time he put it on, his breath caught as he pictured his burly friend in the garden at Durham House.

With the needle Mr. Harriot had given him, Sky stitched a cap like Andrew’s from the skins of rabbits they snared. They played hide-and-seek in the winter woods. Andrew gave Sky a mirror and taught him how to flash and signal in the bright cold light.

No one dared grumble within earshot of Captain Lane, but he knew his people were dismayed that food was short and they’d not found gold. To keep order, he worked the explorers harder than ever gathering firewood, strengthening the fort, surveying, hunting. “Not so glum, my boys!” he said over and over. “Work cures all dismay.”

The day of the snowstorm, he summoned Mr. Harriot.

“You must plan our revels!” he announced. “We’ll be wanting skits and music. Work it up.”

The carpenters built a makeshift stage in the great hall with a sign: “Fort Roanoke revels, 1585.” Chief Pemisapan and his dignitaries were invited. They came in full warrior regalia with gifts of tobacco. The English put on their fineries too, including the gentleman whose yellow silk suit got stained in the
Tyger
’s grounding. The Indians admired him most of all: “Yellow bird!” they said in their language, pointing and nodding as the firelight caught their oiled faces and made them gleam in a way that made some uneasy.

To warm things up, the Englishmen sang patriotic songs and the Queen’s anthem, everyone playing and banging away on something—bagpipes, whistles, rattles, battle drums, bells, flutes, fiddles. Then it was time for the skit. They built the fire up to roaring and lit torches. The place went silent. The air was thick with blue tobacco smoke.

To a merry march of bagpipes and fiddles, Sky flashed a mirror beam on a figure dressed like a young warrior creeping out from a dark corner toward someone dressed like Captain Lane, in armor and tin hat, with a heavy stick in one hand, a shovel in the other. As the warrior drew close, the captain banged his stick on the floor and waved the shovel. “Dig, boys, dig! Dig harder!” he yelled.

The Indians in the audience nudged one another, pointing first at the warrior, then at the captain. “Big Thumps-a-Stick!” they muttered.

Andrew played the Indian; Tremayne played Captain Lane. It took a while for the noisy captain to notice the boy. When at last he did, he thumped and stomped even harder.

“What do you dig for?” the warrior asked.

“Gold!” the captain thundered. “Grains of gold!”

“You look hungry, sir. Do you eat those grains?”

“Ignorance!” the captain spluttered.

“We grow yellow grains you can eat!” the warrior announced. “Would you like me to show you?”

The captain turned away, reciting Bible verses at the top of his voice.

The Indian put up his hands and made a sad face as he turned away.

The captain stood tall as he held out the shovel. “Not so glum, my boy! Work cures all dismay!”

As the company roared its pleasure, the actors stood in the shadows.

What would Captain Lane say?

Sky shined the mirror on the captain as he stepped forward, clapping and bowing to Andrew and Tremayne.

“A dram of spirits for everyone in the house!” he ordered. The strong drink sent the Indians staggering as the explorers toasted the players, the captain, Sir Walter, and the Queen.

On a signal from the captain, the English sang grace with more feeling than one might have expected from that rowdy crowd, then sat down to feast on bear meat none too fresh. They were merry, but their guts were as noisy and windy as the bagpipes.

After the feast there were more jigs and reels, men dancing with men as their Indian guests looked on. When at last the company was tired and sweaty, there were carols, and Mr. Harriot read the Christmas story from Luke.

Then the presents! A gold angel coin from Sir Walter for each of the men; a fine French knife for Sky—“So the next time you cut me, you won’t have to use an oyster shell,” the captain laughed. Andrew got the same. There were compasses for Wanchese and Manteo; for Tremayne and Mr. Harriot, Spanish pistols. There were knitted wool caps for the Indians, which they wouldn’t put on but held open like sacks, hoping for better. At last, to a skreel of bagpipes and rattle of battle drums, Mr. Harriot made Chief Pemisapan the gift of a spring clock. Its ticking and the moving hands enchanted the chief. The metal was alive!

“You will thrive so long as the clock’s hands turn,” Mr. Harriot advised. “If they slow or stop, you must send to the fort.” Mr. Harriot kept the key.

There was a surprise to conclude all. At Mr. Harriot’s directing, Sky had helped Tremayne and Andrew tie bags of gunpowder to the branches of a large tree opposite the gate. When all the explorers were gathered outside, bidding farewell to their guests, a snake of flame shot sizzling from the fort. With a roar, the tree appeared to rise up out of the ground, exploding in yellow, blue, and red flashes.

The Indians and many of the English threw themselves on the ground in terror. They got up professing it a great joke.

The day after Christmas, a party of warriors came to the fort with corn, venison, and fish, enough for one hundred four men. Chief Pemisapan’s clock had stopped.