Cate of the Lost Colony (21 page)

Then she turned to Ananias and Ambrose Vickers and in a calm voice told them she would remain in Nantioc rather than be an outcast in Roanoke.

“Don’t be foolish, Mistress Pierce. There is no sin that cannot be forgiven,” Ambrose Vickers said. But his words lacked conviction.

“I repent of nothing,” she said, her eyes flashing. “I simply choose to live among those who will not judge me.”

She walked over and stood beside the Croatoan women. I was startled to see Mika stealing glances at Thomas Graham, an expression of sadness on her face. While Ananias and the others had averted their eyes from the women, Graham was gazing at Mika as if his Anne had never existed. My mind reeled, trying to take this in.
Graham and Mika?

Tameoc reached out and put his hand on Jane’s shoulder, and I was glad for her. But Ambrose Vickers was horrified.

“Whore!” The single word came from his mouth before Graham seized him by the collar, almost choking him.

“Judge not, lest ye be judged,” he growled, a phrase Vickers surely recognized from his Bible.

Ambrose shook off Graham and strode out of Nantioc so fast Betty had to run to catch up with him.

I went up to Jane and said through my tears, “Maybe someday you can rejoin us—with Tameoc and your baby. I will always welcome you.”

There were eleven in the party that returned to Roanoke Island: Betty and I; Ambrose, Ananias, Graham, and three other soldiers; Manteo and two Indians. The journey was slow due to Manteo’s injuries. A week after setting out, we arrived at Roanoke Island on a day sunny with promise and loud with the buzz of late summer insects. I was giddy with relief and gratefulness. Graham helped me ashore and spun me around in a sudden dance. Ambrose and Betty knelt in prayer. But as we approached the fort, our joys dissolved. Fresh mounds of dirt in the graveyard and an ominous silence spoke of some calamity. My first thought was that the fort had been attacked and everyone was dead. Had it been the Spanish or hostile Indians?

It was neither. No, the attacker had been a mortal sickness that killed seven people. Roger Bailey and thirty-four healthy colonists had filled both shallops and sailed for Chesapeake, leaving behind those who were ill. Now there were fewer than thirty people at Fort Ralegh. One of them was the motherless child, Virginia Dare, for, to my sorrow and Ananias’s inconsolable grief, Eleanor had been the latest casualty.

Chapter 34

I, Manteo, Have a Dream from Ahone

W
hen I found the white men lost in the forests of Ossomocomuck and went with them across the sea, learned their tongue and let them make me a lord, how could I foresee that my promises to my new friends would one day lead me to kill Wanchese? He had been my companion on the voyage to London. His people and mine were once friends. His blood and mine, two rivers flowing through Ossomocomuck to the same sea.

Yet I did not regret my deed. Wanchese had mistreated Nantioc’s neighbors and did not deserve to rule them. He had made himself an enemy of the English when he could have prospered by them. He would have forced Ladi-cate to marry him, although not even a weroance should take a woman against her will. Wanchese sought war and died by his own words:
In war one must slay or be slain.

When I thought of our fight, I was surprised at the strength I had found to defeat him. It did not feel like montoac from the gods but like something already burning within me. I had killed Wanchese to free Ladi-cate. Surely Algon would have done as much for his Moon Maiden. But when did I begin to think of Ladi-cate as mine? Was it when I first glimpsed her among the maids of Kwin-lissa-bet? When I saw her in the stream, holding the spear to protect herself? She had never fled from me but showed me respect, even when the others mistrusted me. Could she become mine not through deception or force, but by her choice? I had let Wanchese capture me, that I might free her, that she might then choose me.

Yet Ladi-cate did not appear grateful for my sacrifice. I wanted her to regard me as Jane-peers regarded Tameoc. But she hardly looked at me, nor did she attempt to speak to me. Did she consider me no better than Wanchese?

If Ladi-cate did not seem glad, the Englishmen were pleased that I had slain their enemy. They asked me to remain at the fort to aid them if Wanchese’s allies attacked. I said I had to visit the peoples of Ossomocomuck to persuade them not to take revenge. To befriend the Croatoan and the English instead.

So I left Fort Ralegh. The colonists were still in some peril. No ships had come to their aid, and they had not even a pinnace to sail in. I could best serve them by seeking peace among their neighbors, so I spent the harvest months going from village to village, sometimes with Tameoc as my councilor. He spoke of the virtues of his wife, Jane-peers. Told how Ladi-cate had brought a white medicine woman to treat their sickness the winter before. Entertained them with stories in which the red-bearded soldier, Grem, became the trickster Fox. All to make them see that the English were like us in many ways.

To those who could not be persuaded to friendship, I offered this counsel: the English, being few, might soon die of hunger if left alone. Still they were suspicious, and in their mistrust I heard the echo of Wanchese’s long-ago taunt:
You are one of them now, are you?
Had I betrayed the native peoples? Brought them harm? No, they had warred among themselves before the big ships came. But I had been mistaken about the montoac of the English. I thought it would bring us power and prosperity. Instead it had stirred up only trouble, which it was my purpose now to settle.

As I returned to my mother’s village for the winter, I reflected that my dreams of being a hero were like a copper trinket dimmed by foul weather. During the bitter months that followed, the leeward shores of Croataon froze as hard as stone. The lodges were half buried by snow. The air inside was rank and smoky. The hunters came back empty-handed, having killed nearly every deer in the forest. I considered how Ladi-cate must be suffering from cold and hunger and felt helpless to relieve her.

One night I dreamed that a white hare lost in the snowy woods stumbled into the den of a black bear, awakening it. The bear growled, angry at being disturbed, but the hare conquered its fear to ask for the bear’s protection. Admiring the hare’s bravery, the bear permitted it to live in the cave. In time the hare gave birth to a human child with a white face and a mane of black hair who grew up to be a weroance capable of great feats of strength. He lifted a canoe filled with many people and set it on a river that flowed into the sunset. When I woke up the bear skin I slept under had fallen to one side and I was shivering. The strange dream made me confused, as if I had a fever.

I thought I would forget the dream, but it did not leave me. It came back the next night, so lifelike I decided it must have come from Ahone, the creator. A man must not ignore such a dream but try to discern its truth. I thought about it for many hours, and after dreaming it a third night, I awoke with an understanding of Ahone’s message.

He was demanding that I save Ladi-cate and her people.

Chapter 35

From the Papers of Sir Walter Ralegh

Memorandum

10 March 1589. Myrtle Grove, Youghal, Ireland. As storms blew the great Armada into the northern seas, Her Majesty now blows my feeble bark to Ireland. I am exiled because of a poem I wrote comparing her to Venus and Lord Essex to Cupid. (I thought she fancied herself in love with the boy.) Essex dared to box me on the head and I demanded a duel, the outcome of which I decline to describe.

Here at Myrtle Grove I lick my wounds and bay at the cold, unfeeling moon while Essex, the queen’s lapdog, pants to be petted. None lament my absence, for everyone loves whom the queen favors and hates whom she disdains.

I find my castle at Lismore in disrepair, my agents careless, and the tenants unruly. With better management they might have yielded enough to fund a voyage to Roanoke this year. My melancholy deepens when I consider the perilous lives, many perhaps lost, of those hopeful, enterprising folk. Lady Catherine—she of the dancing gray eyes and sleek black hair—deserved better than what poor Sir Walter Ralegh has done. They all did.

Poem

If all the world and love were young

And truth in every courtier’s tongue,

Then hopes of pleasure might me move,

To come to thee and claim thy love.

But flowers fade and wanton fields

To winter’s harsh reckoning yield,

The fruit in hand has fall’n, forgotten;

My folly is ripe; my reason rotten.

15 August 1589. I signed 150 new tenancy agreements, including one for Thomas Harriot, who has chosen to settle in Ireland. He is planting the root he brought back from the New World, “openauk,” which he calls “potato,” curious to see if it will grow in this climate and whether people will consent to eat it.

If Virginia were less remote, sea travel less perilous, and Her Majesty less thrifty, I might have had better success there. While it seems likely that Ireland, however wayward her inhabitants, may be brought to a civil state with far less trouble and expense.

3 September 1589. Visited the secretary to the queen’s deputy, one Edmund Spenser, at Kilcolman Castle. He is writing an epic poem in praise of the queen that will comprise twelve books. I advised him to be very careful, for if he should write a single offensive couplet out of many thousand, Elizabeth would be sure to note it. He replied that his epic poem will be an allegory, in which the meaning is partly hidden. He read me a passage in which Belphoebe, a beautiful virgin, takes pity upon a wounded squire and heals him with cordials and tobacco. This, he said, was meant to show my ill usage and move the queen to forgive me. I urged him to offer his work to the queen without delay. Because he is a stranger to her presence, I said I would write a sonnet to commend it.

12 December 1589. Spenser presented his
Faerie Queene
to the delight of Her Majesty. She was not so pleased with his person, however, for he is a little man and almost forty years old, but she showed him respect, which is to be preferred over wanton affection.

When Spenser had finished reading from his poem, I reminded her of my sonnet comparing her to Petrarch’s Laura. She smiled, which I took for encouragement and offered her a pipe, a symbol of peace. “This is the most profitable plant in all of Virginia,” I said.

“It turns to smoke, from what I can see,” she said after sucking on the pipe. “What value is in that?”

Oh, she was clever but I was no lackwit. “I’ll wager that I can weigh the smoke and prove to you that it is not nothing.”

She said she would grant me £25 if I succeeded. So I called for a scale, a sheaf of tobacco leaves, and a metal basin. I weighed the leaves, then set them aflame in the basin. When the leaves had burned and pungent smoke filled the air, I weighed the ashes.

“Subtracting the weight of the ashes from that of the leaves, the difference must be the weight of the smoke,” I said, showing my smile that used to please her so.

Elizabeth folded her hands and pressed her forefingers to her lips. I could not tell whether she appreciated my wit or was displeased at losing the wager.

“I have heard of gold turning into smoke”—was she rebuking me for failing to find precious metals in Virginia?—“but you are the first to turn smoke into gold.”

Then turning to Lord Burghley, she bade him give me £25.

She leaned close and spoke in my ear. “Your sonnet did please me, Sir Warter.”

My heart sprang up like a young boy’s. I gambled everything, saying, “I will write a whole volume of sonnets, Your Majesty, if you will but send a ship to relieve my colonists in Virginia.”

Suddenly the queen frowned. “Once again you have presumed too far,” she said loudly enough to draw attention to us.

I bowed so she would not see my angry humiliation, whereupon she murmured in my ear, “Attend me in my chamber at nine o’clock tonight.” Then she struck me with her fan. “Away!”

14 December 1589. I will endure a thousand blows with whatever instrument she chooses, if she remains true to her word!

At the appointed hour I went to my royal mistress. Her erratic mood had gone, and she came at once to the heart of the matter.

“I do not forgive presumption, but I admire persistence,” she said. “How many times now have you tried to send your ships to Virginia despite the embargo? And John White has covered my desk with his petitions.” She paused. “Do you think my colonists are still alive?”

I affirmed the land contained everything needful for their well-being. I was afraid to say more, as my words so often displeased her.

“John White failed to govern them well. Surely they have now fallen into factions.”

I recalled Catherine’s letter concerning that very matter. “Men cannot govern themselves if they are all equals,” was all I said.

“I must also know if the Spanish have located the colony,” she said. “Our spies report that King Philip has sent out a fleet to look for it.”

This was what I dreaded most: that Spanish mariners, informed by spies in the West Indies, had captured the fort and now controlled Virginia. Had they slain all the colonists? Or were they taken captive, and Catherine forced into the arms of a swarthy Spaniard?

The queen was peering at me. “You loved her, did you not?” she asked.

“Your … Majesty?” I said in some confusion.

“You know whom I mean.” Her voice was not unkind. “You gave this to her.”

She held up a handkerchief with her initials in the corner. It was the very one she had given me, the one I then gave to Catherine when she visited my library. Had I loved her? The real question was, did I have the courage that Catherine had, to admit my love?

I chose my words with care. “Your Majesty, I have loved—”

She held up her hand, interrupting me. “Never mind. Do not answer me. That was long ago.” Then she pressed the handkerchief into my hand. “Take it and give it to her again.”

She spoke as if Lady Catherine were in the next room. I looked into her eyes for signs of debility, but those bright lights, enfolded now in tiny wrinkles, showed no signs of an aged mind.

“Now you jest with me, Your Grace. Truly I deserve your reproof and even your scorn, but—”

“I do not jest.” Her voice was sharp. “I give you the opportunity—nay, I command you—to right a wrong that I regret.” She turned away from me. “I banished her for nothing more than loving you.”

I stood motionless, amazed by this confession.

When Elizabeth glanced back at me, her eyes were moist. “Which was no great wrong, or if it was, the greatest have been guilty of it, too.”

Was she admitting her love for me as well as her sorrow for injuring Catherine? Oh, what did it even matter? Like a gift were the words that fell from her lips.

“I cannot let those brave people perish. Sir Walter, I will release your ships, and you may use them to supply my colonists.”

I sank to my knees and with choice words declared her graciousness. Then the thought of my nemesis gave me pause. “Walsingham will try to stop me,” I said.

The queen pressed her lips tightly together. “Walsingham is not the king! I am sovereign here, and I declare his unreasoning envy shall no longer hinder your enterprise. I will give out that I have sent you back to Ireland because you displeased me. But in fact you will sail to Virginia secretly. There you will ensure it is duly governed and return with a report. John White may accompany you. No one will know about the voyage but the three of us.”

For a moment I was stunned that the queen would act without the knowledge and approval of her ministers. And yet I saw the wisdom of it. If they learned of the voyage, she could disavow any knowledge of it and claim I stole away against her wishes.

“When you return with the news that the colony thrives and the Indians have been civilized and converted to the true religion, even Walsingham will hail you as a hero.”

What a tantalizing thought! “And the Lady Catherine?” I ventured to ask. “After I give her the handkerchief, what shall I do?”

I saw my mistress hesitate. Her long hands fluttered. Then they rested and she fixed me with her clear, bright stare.

“Bring her home, and she can be yours.”