Jamestown (The Keepers of the Ring) (45 page)

Thirty-five

T
he story, brought by a lone survivor who had hidden in a barrel of corn, was brief and horrible. George Thorpe, the gentle scholar who had come to direct the school for Indian and English children, had initiated a friendship with the great chief Opechancanough. In order to demonstrate his trust, Thorpe allowed Opechancanough free access to all the grounds of the school at Falling Creek and had even built the chief an English house at Henrico. While Thorpe congratulated himself on the success of his peace-making venture, Opechancanough spied out every corner of the settlement and school at Falling Creek while the Indians and English worked together in the fields and forests.

“
Master Thorpe,” the frightened survivor panted, his eyes rolling wildly in his fright, “even ignored the law forbidding muskets to the savages. Opechancanough was given a musket for hunting, and ‘twas with that gun that he blew a hole in Master Thorpe’s head.”

A strange whispering moved through the air, like the trembling breaths of a hundred simultaneous astonishments.
“Shall we not avenge these deaths?” one man in the crowd yelled, his hand upon the pistol in his belt. “Or will we wait until Opechancanough comes to take us as well?”

The crowd broke forth in confused babble, each man arguing with his neighbor, until Governor George Yeardley shot his pistol in the air.
As silence and the acrid smell of gunpowder fell upon the group, the governor lifted his hand to address the mob. “We will take a party of armed men to the village of Opechancanough,” he said, his brows rushing together in a brooding knot over his eyes. “We have a treaty of peace with the chief, and until we know why the peace was broken I will not attack his people.”

A roaring shout of disapproval met this pronouncement, but the governor stepped down and shouldered his way through the crowd.
Slinking timidly behind, Yeardley’s secretary followed in the wake of frightened and distrustful looks directed at the governor.

Brody turned to Fallon and gave him a twisted smile:
“So since y’are not taking a wife, how about joining the governor as part of the militia?”

“
Nay,” Fallon answered, turning toward Mistress Rolfe’s house. A confusing rush of anticipation and dread whirled inside him. “I have the feeling I’ll be needed here.”

Gilda was surprised later that evening when Governor Yeardley himself escorted the hysterical survivor of Falling Creek to the house.
News of the massacre had traveled like a firestorm through the settlement, and she greeted the governor quietly and pointed toward an empty mattress for the terrified and exhausted survivor. The man shrank from her at first, his face set in a look of startled wariness, but she soothed him in perfect English and told him he had nothing to fear.

After settling the man and giving him an herb potion to help him sleep, she entered the kitchen and found Fallon in conversation with Edith.
“How fares your new patient?” Fallon asked, giving her a polite smile. “He seemed mostly unhurt, just scared.”

“He is exhausted and hungry and he needs a bath,” Gilda said, picking up a bucket of water near the fireplace. “His body is strong, but the healing of his mind will take time. He hath seen things he did not expect to see.”

“
Let me help you,” Fallon said, coming to take the heavy bucket from her. She allowed him to carry it and led the way to the man’s bedside. Fallon put the bucket on the floor and she dipped a clean cloth into the water, wrung it out, and proceeded to wipe a week’s accumulation of dirt from the unconscious man’s face and hands.

“
His name is Jack Traylor,” she said simply, working expertly with the cloth while Fallon unbuttoned the man’s soiled jerkin. “He hath only been in Virginia for a few months. He was not prepared for the realities of warfare.”

“
The realities of savage warfare, you mean,” Fallon answered, lifting the man’s shoulders so Gilda could slip the jerkin from the man’s back.

She bit back angry words and reproved him with a stern glance.
“Indian warfare is no more savage than English,” she said, tossing the lice-laden jerkin onto the floor. “And the Indian way is much more truthful.”

“
How can you say that?” Fallon asked, kneeling to face her across the man’s body. “Opechancanough hath promised peace betwixt our peoples, yet he hath attacked and killed godly men who sought to educate his children—”

“
Opechancanough sought to defend his children from the Englishmen’s crafty intrusion,” Gilda answered, her temper flaring. “The English promise peace, but then they teach Indian children to deny the Indian way of life. They win hearts through subtlety and trickery and make Indian warriors drunk so they can steal furs and grain—”

“
Where have you heard these things?” Fallon snapped, reaching for her hand. He caught it and held it tight. “You have listened too much to Opechancanough.”

“
You have not listened to him at all! He is old, Fallon, and wise. His scouts have been north where the French give strong waters to warriors who drink themselves crazy with it. Opechancanough hath been south, where the Spanish made slaves of the Indians more civilized than they—”

“
He is a liar. He denies God and hath led you astray.”

“
He knows more about the Holy Book than you, Fallon. And though he now denies God, he once walked in the Holy Way. Something changed his heart, but if we are patient and try to understand him, we can bring his heart back to the truth—”

“‘
Tis folly to think such a thing!” Fallon said, thrusting her hand away from him as if she had turned into the hated chief himself. “He is a plague, Gilda, an evil spirit, a cursed creature, and we would do well to be rid of him—”

“
He is of my people!” Gilda answered, sinking to the floor. She curled her hands to her breast. “He is the only person who still lives that I remember from my childhood. He is my uncle. He is part of me, Fallon, and if you hate him, you must hate me also.”

“
Gilda, I don’t hate—”

“
In sooth, you do.”

She felt the chasm between them like an open wound.
After a moment, Fallon shuffled to his feet and left the room. When she was sure he had gone, Gilda wept, burying her head in the mattress where Jack Traylor lay.

Governor Yeardley set out for Weromacomico at dawn the next day and returned a week later.
He had visited Opechancanough himself, he reported, and another tribe, not the Powhatan, had committed the attack on Falling Creek. Opechancanough personally guaranteed that the peace between his people and the English would continue to stand. “This he said to me,” the governor told the audience assembled outside the walls of the Jamestown fort, “that the sky should sooner fall than the peace be broken on his part, and that he hath given order to all his people to give no offense. He desires the like from us.”

“
What of the witness?” a harsh voice called from the crowd. “The survivor himself saw Opechancanough kill Master Thorpe.”

The governor allowed his stone face to crack into a pose of compassionate humanity.
“The man we saw last week is not of sound mind. We cannot risk the peace on account of his rantings.”

“
You mean ‘tis not politic to believe him!” another voice accused, but Governor Yeardley lifted his hands in dismissal, then moved inside the fort.

Still fearful and hungry for blood, the disgruntled crowd dispersed and Gilda noticed that more than one pair of eyes turned toward her in distrust.
Unfortunately, since Jamestown was a city of transients, few in the crowd knew her as a long-time resident and her dark skin and hair drew immediate attention. The new brides proved to be especially skittish since hearing of the tragedy at Falling Creek. Most were vocal and loudly determined that they would not venture to their wilderness plantations unless something was done to neutralize the threat of the Indians.

So in the days that followed the attack upon Falling Creek, three Indian hunters were captured on the river and hung in the city square, but by whom no one knew.
A fortnight later an Indian family was found lying in the dust outside the fort; even the throats of the children had been cut. The bodies remained in the hot sun for hours until Fallon and Wart retrieved them for burial.
Fallon can say naught about Indian savagery now
, Gilda thought after hearing about the murdered family.

These evidences of English brutality sickened Gilda far more than the harsh looks she endured whenever she walked
through the settlement. But her defining moment of truth came one Sunday at church. The narrow building was crowded and buzzed pleasantly with the whispers of brides eager to make themselves right with God before journeying into the wilderness with their new husbands. Gilda noticed several suspicious sidelong glances when she and Edith entered, but she held her head high as she led Edith to an empty bench. She could not help but notice that Brody did not choose to sit behind her as was his custom. In an odd moment of distraction, Gilda wished that Fallon had come, but he was visiting a plantation at Charles City.

After the benediction, Gilda remained to chat for a moment with Reverend Buck, then slipped through the doorway with Edith.
Looking up, she was surprised to see that many in the crowd of worshippers, both men and women, had lined up in a gauntlet of sorts outside the church.

“
Mayhap we should wait,” Edith said, pulling on Gilda’s arm. “We’re in no hurry to return home, Gilda, and if we wait a moment—”

“
Nay,” Gilda answered, staring at the pale, pinched faces before her.

Edith visibly shrank back.
“I can’t do it,” she whimpered, wringing her hands. “The Lord knows I bear enough scorn for being plain, so I can’t walk through that crowd with you. I just can’t.”

Gilda gave her a dry, one-sided smile.
“Then stay here.” With a quick intake of breath like someone about to plunge into icy water, she wrapped her dignity about her and walked through the double lines.

An ocean of contempt engulfed her.
“Stay away from the house of God, you murdering savage!” one of the women hissed, and another tossed her head forward and spat upon Gilda’s cheek before letting loose a stream of foul invective.

Verbal insults, growled threats, and at least three stones were hurled at her, but Gilda held her head high as benefitted an Indian princess and walked steadily home.

Back in Mistress Rolfe’s house, Gilda took a damp cloth and washed her face, let down her hair, and slipped out of the simple bodice, kirtle, and petticoat she had worn to church. Leaving them in a pile on the floor of her small chamber, she went to her trunk and lifted out the buckskin tunic she had worn into town so many moons before. She rubbed her hands over it, relishing its supple smoothness, then slipped it over her head.

Sitting on the floor, she crossed her legs and ran her hand expertly over her scalp, parting her hair into two sections.
Her fingers automatically plaited her dark hair into two braids while she sat before the shuttered window and thought.

Edith crept into the house in the quiet of the afternoon and left Gilda alone, of certain too cowardly and ashamed to face her.
Wart respected her closed door and stayed away. Brody did not come to the house at all, and in the arctic emptiness of her soul Gilda felt vaguely grateful for the quiet.

Brody did appear at sunset, and as he knocked on the front door of the house Gilda padded to the window in her bare feet.
Pushing the shutter open, she lifted herself up and out. Moving as soundlessly as a shadow while the dark came on, she crept across the courtyard and had nearly reached the gate when a hand closed around her upper arm. She stifled a scream.

“
Where do you think y’are going?”

Fallon.
When had he learned to prowl silently in the darkness? She closed her eyes, wishing him away.

“
I heard about what happened at the church, Gilda. I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”

“
Go home, Fallon. You said you would go home to England, so why are you still here?”

“
England hath never been my home.” He pulled her around to face him, and she stiffened in rebellion. “Y’are being a child.”

“
Am I?” Her eyes flew open. “Did we not speak of English and Indian brutality?” she asked, blazing up at him. “Which have we seen thus far? Have I, an Indian, spat upon any of the pitiful men that have sought help in this house? Have I reviled them for the diseases they picked up from loose women in the Caribbean or threatened them with death because they look upon me with lust in their hearts? Nay, Fallon, I have not. And yet though I have sought to treat them with the kindness God expects of his children, today I have suffered far worse than the innocent family who lay in the dust of Jamestown this week. They are now in merciful heaven, while I am left to suffer the torment of the enlightened English who lift their hands to God one minute and hurl stones at Indians in the next—”