Raleigh's Page (17 page)

37

P
EMISAPAN’S
L
AST
P
LOT

Andrew lay half awake in the first light. Hunger prodded him. His mind raced in the way hunger inspires.

Wanchese and Pemisapan scheme to starve us on the river
.
Once they know we’re dead, they’re going to kill those left at the fort. Wanchese has gone to Pemisapan to do that work!

He poked Tremayne awake and told him what he’d figured out. “Wanchese is an allegiance man,” Andrew explained. “Pemisapan wants us gone. Wanchese follows his plan.”

“Yes, it’s possible, Wanchese going off like that…,” Tremayne said slowly. “What do we do? How do we get word to the fort?”

Just then Salt made a row after a squirrel that had slipped under a log. Thinking to eat that breakfast for him, Andrew heaved at the log and went sprawling.

It was a small hollowed-log boat with two rough paddles.

Tremayne looked at Andrew and nodded. “That’s how we’ll beat Wanchese!” he said with a tight smile.

They went and told Mr. Harriot. Together they examined the boat. “It might work,” Mr. Harriot muttered. “It’s worth anything to try and beat Pemisapan. Let’s see what the captain says.”

“I wouldn’t have Andrew tell it the way he told it to me,” Tremayne said. “It sounds too much like a dream.”

“You two tell him, then,” Andrew replied.

Mr. Harriot went to Captain Lane. Without mentioning Andrew, he reported what Andrew had figured Wanchese was up to and their plan to beat him to the fort.

The captain’s jaw worked when he heard the Indian’s name. Slowly, he nodded. “Show me the boat,” he said after a pause.

“It will carry you three,” he muttered when he saw it. “Go, and good luck!” He turned quickly and walked away.

As they dropped down the river, Andrew watched for the place where they’d left the young captive.

He wasn’t there. Nobody said anything. A weight lifted from Andrew’s heart.

They paddled without stop, switching places as they went, two paddling as the one resting ate cold stew of dog, cooled his blistered hands, and scooped water from the river. The ache in their shoulders became a steady searing flame of pain.

It was almost dark when Salt stiffened. They smelled smoke. They hardly breathed as they drifted past.

In the fire’s glow they saw Wanchese, his back to them.

They paddled all that night and through the next day. It was dark when they beached the boat on the shore below the fort and stumbled up to the gate. It was barred.

As Salt barked their greeting, Mr. Harriot yelled, “What cheer, Englishmen! Admit us!”

They could hear calling inside. Suddenly a clutch of flaming reeds came flying over the rampart. The three moved close to the burning reeds so the guards could see their faces.

“It’s Mr. Harriot!” someone shouted. “Open the gate! It’s Mr. Harriot with Tremayne and Andrew!”

As they entered the fort, folks rushed up, pulling on clothes and yelling, “Where are the others?” “Did you find gold?”

“Wanchese betrayed us,” Mr. Harriot said, and downed a dram of spirits to ease the pain in his shoulders. “He plotted with Pemisapan to starve us,” he went on as he filled the glass for Tremayne. “All the river villages were deserted. Once Wanchese figured we were sure to die of hunger in the cold, he hurried back to help attack the weakened fort. We passed him last night. He’ll make Pemisapan’s village tomorrow.”

Tremayne left something in the glass for Andrew. It burned going down, but soon it soothed.

“The others were alive when we left them,” Mr. Harriot continued. “They’re a day or two behind us. We never got to where the wassador is found.

“And you people? Your news?”

“We are as you left us, sir, only starker,” replied the lieutenant. “The last time we sent to Pemisapan for food, he turned us away with nothing. He lets time do his work.”

“The hostage, Skiko, how is he?” Mr. Harriot asked.

“He’s well.”

The people at Fort Roanoke had kept Skiko fed and comfortable, despite their own wants.

Mr. Harriot went to him. “I’m sorry,” he said as he unlocked Skiko’s chains.

The Indian said nothing. He left the next morning with a large tin platter, a peace offering for his father.

The following afternoon Captain Lane and the haggard expedition men straggled in. Right away, the captain set off with Mr. Harriot, Tremayne, and Andrew and an armed guard to parley with Pemisapan for food and show the chief his plan was spoiled.

Andrew watched Pemisapan’s face as they filed into his lodge. If the chief was startled to see them alive, he gave no sign. Andrew noticed that the allegiance men, though, studied them as rare creatures.

Their surviving seemed to convince Pemisapan they really were possessed of a kind of magic. That, plus the power of their guns, persuaded him to allow the English a measure of his seed corn and the promise his people would plant two fields for them.

It was dark when they got back to the fort. Captain Lane addressed the company: “Pemisapan has sold us food for three days. He will continue to buy our pots, cloth, and other goods. For pleasure in those things and fear of our guns, he promises to have his people plant for us.”

“If that’s all there is, we can’t last,” Tremayne murmured to Andrew. “The new corn won’t be ripe until July.” Andrew belched a dry heave and wondered if the taste in his mouth was fear. His stomach rumbled.

Tremayne heard and nodded. “Mine too,” he said gently. “Never mind. We’ll make it. Sir Walter knows we’re hungry. The resupply he promised for Easter is out there somewhere.” Besides cheering Andrew, Tremayne cheered himself.

The next evening Andrew wrote in the journal, “We eat so little now we enjoy great cleanness of teeth.”

As he was writing, Skiko returned with a warning. Andrew translated for the company: “I have been to see Pemisapan. He treats me as an ally because I was your prisoner. A great priest has died. Pemisapan has summoned a large gathering of mourners, mostly warriors. They will assemble at his village. He has been buying alliances with them with your copper pots.

“When the moon is down, he’ll bring those warriors here in boats. On a signal, his allegiance men will shoot fire arrows into the captain’s house and Mr. Harriot’s. When you come rushing out in your nightshirts, they will slaughter you and then take on the whole, which he says will be no more dangerous than a headless snake.”

As Andrew reported Skiko’s message, Captain Lane began to pace. He narrowed his eyes and glared at Skiko. “Ask him why he warns us. It may be a trick.”

Andrew repeated exactly what the captain had said.

Skiko gave the captain a long look. “For the care your men and those two took of me,” he said finally, pointing to Andrew and Tremayne. “The mourners come soon,” he warned as he left.

The captain called the company together. “We are doomed if we wait. The only thing for it is to strike first.

“Now!

“We’ll need to be few and quick: me, my ten best soldiers, and you, Mr. Harriot, to lead us through Pemisapan’s village—you know it best and can do our interrogating.

“Who else?” he said, half to himself. Andrew held his breath; he didn’t want to be left out.

“Andrew,” said Mr. Harriot. “He has the naphtha and knows how to manage it. Better than fire arrows—he can set the main lodges afire all at once. Tremayne will lay the fuse.”

“Yes!” said the captain. “Fourteen people; three boats.”

The attackers blackened their faces. Andrew half-smiled to himself at how cold his hands were as he smeared on the wood ash. His face was hot.

They canoed to the mainland. The sky was dark; there was a noisy wind. Andrew carried a large piece of flint, the piece of roughened steel to strike against, and the bottle of naphtha. Tremayne carried the fuse—a long rope of cotton cloth laced with gunpowder. The boy’s only thought was how the village was laid out, where the lodges he had to spread the naphtha around were. He checked the bottle. Tight. He patted his pocket to make sure the flint and steel were there.
Yes.

The raiders slipped into the village, tossing bones to the dogs. The captain’s scouts crept up behind the Indian guards, flung silk cords around their necks and pulled tight, then bagged the heads in canvas sacks.

Andrew rubbed his hands together to warm them so his grip would be good on the naphtha bottle. As Tremayne set out to lay the fuse, Andrew crept around the lodges where Pemisapan and his allegiance men slept. He tried to pour an even band. The smell was strong. He held his breath when he heard people stirring inside. Now he was panting, but his hands were steady. His only thought was to spread the naphtha right, no breaks, around here, there, and then a trail to where the fuse would be.

With the last of it, he made a pool, where Tremayne set the fuse end.

Calm now, staring, listening hard, Andrew slipped to his place of safety.

At the captain’s yell, he struck a spark. It didn’t take. His hands were shaking. He struck again. Too feeble. “Steady!” he said to himself. “Steady.” It was Sir Walter’s voice. “One, two, three—strike!”

The fuse caught. It burned toward the lodges faster than a man could run.

Andrew hadn’t realized it, but in his nervousness he’d spilled some of the naphtha on his boot. As the fuse caught, the spark had set him on fire too!

Struggling to stifle his own flames, he watched the fuse fire flashing and sparking to where the naphtha started.

“Yes!” he shouted when the naphtha caught. It went around the lodges exactly right, fiercer and higher than he’d expected, first firing the lodge coverings, then the whole in a crackling roar as black smoke billowed up out of the orange.

“Yes!” he shouted again, weaker, as he heard screams and felt the sear of his own burns.

Amidst yells and gunshots, Pemisapan fled in the confusion of frantic men, women, and children. No one stayed behind to fight; the Indians disappeared into the forest as their village went up like an immense bonfire. The flames cast evil shapes over the cornfields. It was like the painting of hell in the Queen’s gallery.

Andrew’s foot was agony now, cooked like a sausage. He tried to walk. He couldn’t. He pulled off what remained of his boot.

His foot was blistering up in large white welts when Captain Lane and the other English scouring the village for holdouts began whistling and cheering. Andrew’s mouth dropped open as one of the soldiers appeared in the awful firelight, holding something away from his body.

It was Pemisapan’s head, dangling crooked from his hair knot, the face ghastly, torn, smiling.

The boy retched as he saw Tremayne following, holding up the breastplate of wassador.

Mr. Harriot found Andrew. He was on the ground, his shoulders shaking like one sobbing. It wasn’t just pain.

“Better him than us,” Mr. Harriot muttered.

“Two injured, not one Englishman lost,” the captain bellowed, looking around as he kicked at the smoking ruin of Pemisapan’s lodge. “They won’t be back!”

“I guess not,” Tremayne said quietly. “We just burned up the last of their saved corn.” He buttoned the plate of wassador inside his shirt.

Mr. Harriot and Tremayne helped Andrew back to their boat. At the fort, Mr. Harriot gave him a drop of Sir Walter’s opium tincture. The boy went down like the Frenchman at Marseilles.

38

A
TTACK OR
R
ESCUE
?

The next morning, Sky returned from his home island. He knew everything about the attack. He brought Andrew a paste he’d made from the stems and roots of a large-leaved plant with white flowers. It calmed the burn enough that Andrew could hobble.

“I snared two rabbits for us,” Sky said. “We’ll roast them in the gully. No one will smell and ask to share.”

He’d showed Andrew the snares. They were hoops of grass so slight they barely made a shadow.

When they got to the gully, Sky gutted the rabbits. As he flicked out the innards, Salt snapped and swallowed them in midair. Sky pulled his needle from the cord around his neck and a strand of silk grass from the pouch at his waist. He sewed the belly skins back tight. “We roast them in their skins,” he said. “Saves the juice!”

As the two boys ate, Salt munched the bones to nothing, then settled happily to gnaw the heads.

“We killed him,” Andrew said slowly. He pinched his lips together. “We were going to be friends and make them Christians. For a while he did what he could for us….”

“You had to,” Sky replied. “You heard what Skiko said.”

“We made him do it,” Andrew said. “If the
Tyger
hadn’t sunk, it would all be different.”

Sky looked at his friend. “It’s not your fault. What could you do? And if you’d been the captain, would you have done different?”

“That’s about what Mr. Harriot said,” Andrew replied. “I asked him if Sir Walter would have done the same. ‘To keep us safe he would. He’s a soldier above all’ was his answer.”

May in that land was like spring in Devon, with wild white roses scenting the air, the green shading darker with every rain, and overnight new leaves sprouting on the brush like mouse ears. In a sunny place, a square-stemmed mint put forth a fist of red flowers. Birds no larger than English moths came hovering to sip them. There were mats of moss thick and soft as velvet pillows. Green scum formed on the ponds; in shallow places frogs laid eggs.

Every day, Captain Lane sent teams of scouts and hunters to the mainland, looking for food and signs of Indians gathering to attack. “No people,” they reported back. “Little game.”

Andrew and Sky spent most of their time hunting food too. Sky showed Andrew new shoots to eat and tubers of something he called groundnuts. They gave Andrew the cramp, but he fed better than some.

The captain worked the men harder than ever to keep them from despair. The moat was dug deeper, the fort strengthened, huge piles of wood were gathered along the shore for bonfires to welcome the relief he assured them would arrive any day.

“All will be well,” he said. “The supply will come and you’ll grow fat again. You will tell your children and grandchildren about this place. Some of you will come back to stay!”

He ordered the watch kept day and night for Indians and Spaniards. Relays of scouts checked the mainland. They saw no one.

Since his first visit to Pemisapan’s village, Andrew had been curious about the medicine root the priests placed on the beds of their dead in the burial lodges and chewed for food on their long trips.

“We gather it now,” Sky explained. “When the hot days come, the leaves die off and you cannot find it.”

They had just dug a clump in the woods along the shore when they heard hollering.

“We are discovered!” gasped a half-dead runner from the farthest watch. His legs were bloody from falls and scrapes. “Many sails! Spaniards come to clear us out! Run! Warn them!”

Andrew and Sky raced to the fort.

The captain ordered all the bonfires lit to make the Spaniards think the English had a great force on the island. He had the signal mirrors flashed and the fort’s bell rung to call folks in.

The boys ran to their tree house and hauled up. The line of ships stretched longer and longer as they watched.

“If they’re Spanish, I’ll take you to my village,” Sky murmured.

“If they’re Spanish, we’ll fight them off or die rolling in our blood!” Andrew replied.

A half hour later the second of the three watchers staggered up to the fort, his boots gone, his face torn from stumbling into brambles.

“They show the flag of St. George! They are English or pirates pretending to be English!” he said, panting.

The third watchman followed soon after, crying as he stumbled, “English! Admiral Drake’s ensign! His fleet!”

By now the captain could make them out through Mr. Harriot’s glass.

“Flash the mirrors to signal welcome!” he ordered. “Row us out!”

“I can’t take you along,” Andrew whispered to Sky.

“I know,” the Indian said with a wry smile.

Andrew looked at him, then looked away.

The flagship’s name was carved on her stern,
Elizabeth Bonaventure.
At her prow she bore a great golden figure representing the Queen.

As Captain Lane and his people rowed up, the
Elizabeth
’s pilot yelled, “Where are your harbor marks?”

“There is no harbor!” bellowed Captain Lane. “Stay deep or you’ll go aground!”

Sir Francis stood on the deck to greet them, a burly, smiling, round-faced man with a broad red beard.

“I’ve come at Sir Walter’s request to find how you do,” he said by way of greeting. His voice was strong and clear. Andrew liked him from the start!

“On our way here, we sacked the Spanish fort to the south at St. Augustine,” the admiral continued. “They will do you no mischief now.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Captain Lane as he clambered aboard, “but our present enemy is hunger. The promised resupply has failed us, and things do not go well with the Indians. We need to move but we have no fit vessel.”

Sir Francis was not one to hesitate.

“I will supply you,” he said with a firm nod. “Food for a year and the
Francis,
a vessel small enough to manage your shoals and bars yet large enough to move you to a better place on the Chesapeake.”

“This is Christmas, truly!” said the captain with a bow.

“Ah!” said Sir Francis, beaming. “Perhaps you and your best people will join me tonight in my cabin for supper? We’ll toast the Queen and her explorers!”

“We’d be honored,” said the captain. “I’ll send out a crew to transfer supplies and bring in the
Francis
.”

The guests went back to wash and put on their finest. Andrew unfolded his page’s outfit. He hadn’t put it on since leaving Durham House. There were moth holes in the jacket. It was tight. The sleeves were short.

Sky watched him dress. “You are not Andrew now,” he said quietly.

“Who am I, then?” Andrew asked with a surprised laugh.

“Allegiance man to Sir Walter.”

“Perhaps you will become one too?” Andrew said, looking closely at his friend.

“No,” said Sky, shaking his head. “I am an Indian. I cannot become a Raleigh English, just as you cannot become one of us.”

“Andrew! To the boat!” Tremayne yelled.

Andrew avoided Sky’s eyes as he left.

Everyone wore such finery as he had, except Mr. Harriot. He wore what he always wore: his long black coat.

Admiral Drake’s cabin smelled of clove and glowed with polished rosewood, bright rubbed brass, beeswax candles, decanters of gold-colored wine, platters of roast pork. The food was served on shining plates. The party stood and cheered the Queen, Sir Walter, Sir Francis, and Captain Lane.

“And Virginia!” called Mr. Harriot. “A toast for her! She’ll outlast all!”

Folks yelled and drummed their boots. Andrew sat still; his burned foot was still sore.