Serpent Never Sleeps (14 page)

"Sir, I have this child to look after. She's one of the three children who survived the Starving Time. All of them are ill. They can't possibly last another winter, even if you send a soldier who can tame the unruly and kill the Indians."

"Who is your husband? Where is he? Bring him here. I have a word for him. The child?"

"I am unmarried, sir, and the girl's name is Humility Pryor. Admiral Somers has made me her guardian until we get to England."

Humility was hidden from him behind the vast desk. I brought her forward to the center of the cabin where he could see the face that seemed all eyes and the arms and legs that looked like sticks.

"Children are needed here in Jamestown," he said. "They're the heart of the future. Don't worry, she'll be taken care of when our new leader arrives." He paused. "By the way, you signed a legal contract before you boarded the ship in Plymouth, did you not?"

"By happenstance, sir. I sold shares at the Foxcroft masque, you may remember, but I never intended to come to Jamestown. Jamestown was far from my thoughts."

The cold look in De La Warr's eyes disappeared, or was it a shaft of sunlight that suddenly came through the windows?

"I remember now," he said. "You were madly in love with Anthony Foxcroft and followed him to Plymouth. Tongues wagged. It was a scandal. To Plymouth and beyond. To Bermuda. I've heard that he was lost at sea."

Suddenly there burst upon us a frightened soldier who announced that hostiles were lurking on the river. "Three canoes," he said, "carrying what look to be six warriors painted red and black. One of them has a gun, which he shot at us. Struck Sir William Poses in the arm. We can overtake them, sir. They're going slow."

"In what direction?"

"Upriver."

"Let them proceed."

"But, sir, they're—"

Lord De La Warr waved him out of the cabin.

Waiting to come in was the cook. When the lord told an attendant to shut the door, the cook said through the crack, "Weevils in the corn, sir."

"Sort them out," De La Warr said.

"Hundreds, sir."

"Sort out what you can," De La Warr said, turning his cold eyes upon me. "And now you wish to return to England. A busy young lady, heh? You have a child to take care of. What else?"

"The king has asked me to help the queen with Her Majesty's correspondence."

De La Warr corrected me. "The king does not ask. The king commands. And if he has commanded you
to join his household as a secretary to the queen, he has not taken kindly to your running off after Foxcroft. Should you now appear in London, the king might toss you in the Tower, cool you off a bit."

He squinted his tired blue eyes. "Secretary to Queen Anne? It is most unlikely. But the king
is
given to lightsome jokes."

To prove that I was not lying, I took off the ring and laid it on the desk.

He picked it up and ran a finger over the coiled serpent.

"The ring is a gift from the king," I said. "I was wearing it the day he asked me to go to London and serve the queen."

"You can serve the queen in Jamestown," he said, handing the ring back to me, "but you can't do so if you're a Jamestown deserter. The king has lofty dreams for the New World. His Majesty would not take kindly to someone who's fled the land."

Unsteady on his thin legs, Lord De La Warr showed us to the deck. The big ship strained at her moorings. Desperately I sought for words that would sway him.

Beyond him the river gleamed. A cannon roared and an iron ball struck the water, far short of a line of canoes moving toward the distant shore. Indians were everywhere, on the river, among the trees of the forest. They watched from the tall grass and the salt meadows. They watched night and day.

"This is no place for a child," I said loudly. "Nor for anyone else."

Lord De La Warr looked me in the eye. "Only for the brave," he answered, and closed the cabin door behind us.

At dusk I took Humility by the hand and went back to the ship. The sailors were eating their supper, laughing, happy to be leaving Jamestown.

The ship, except for De La Warr's cabin, was much like the
Deliverance.
I took Humility down a ladder-way to the bilge. At the stern I found a cubbyhole where tattered sails were stored. We got inside, closed the door, and stretched out on the sails.

The hole smelled of tar and turpentine and was so dark we could scarcely see each other. We had no food or water, but that did not matter. De La Warr planned to sail at dawn on the ebbing tide. By noon we would be across Chesapeake Bay, bound for England. Then, when it was too late to turn back, Humility and I would appear on deck.

I cautioned her to be quiet. "Do not talk aloud. If you have anything to say, whisper. Better yet, remain silent."

Everything worked well for a time, albeit she was bursting with excitement. By a slit in the door that let in a sliver of light, I could see her eyes shining. She pressed my hand. We were conspirators in league against the world's awful things. We listened to the sounds of sailors on the deck, to those in the rigging, to the voices on shore bidding the ship farewell.

I saw the glint of two small eyes before Humility did. We were lying on coils of rope. The eyes shone
out from the folds of a tattered sail. In the dim light they looked like beautiful gems, like twin rubies.

With one hand I quietly opened the door and with the other shook the sail. It was a mistake. I should have done nothing. The rat was at home among the canvas folds. At my rash act, it scurried across Humility's chest, down a leg, over a foot, and out the door.

Her screams followed it. I closed the door and took her in my arms and waited. I didn't wait long. I heard running steps. Then the door flew open and a bewhiskered young man stood staring down at us.

"Behold," he said with some surprise. "What do we have here?"

"Stowaways," I said weakly.

"Upon my word, upon Poseidon's golden spear," he said, "if it's not Serena Lynn and little Humility!"

I recognized him. He was an assistant to Lord De La Warr. "Mr. Bertram," I said, "please close the door and let us be."

Mr. Bertram pondered. He stuck out his tongue and wet his lips. I believe that he would have closed the door and gone his way had it not been for the two sailors who came at that instant for the coil of rope we were sitting upon.

As it was, he helped us to our feet, escorted us to the gangplank, and waved us good-bye.

Lord De La Warr sailed from Jamestown the next day. I watched his ship leave the riverbank while drummers beat on their flag-draped drums, himself propped against a bulwark, waving his braided hat. It was a bitter sight to see the ship gaily disappear in the morning haze, alas, without me. Yet it only strengthened my resolve to leave Jamestown. There would be other chances, other ships that sailed for England.

A chance seemed to come sooner than I expected. Lord De La Warr had left his kinsman, Sir George Percy, in charge of the colony. In desperation, Sir George decided once more to try to find Pocahontas.

He sent forth three bands of scouts to search her out. One band went up the James to the mountains where it began. Another searched the Pamunkey River, still another the land of the Nansemonds. All returned with wildly conflicting stories.

Pocahontas had quarreled with her father and fled after I left Werowocómoco. Her father was interested in improving trade with the Patawamake, members of his confederacy, and had sent her north as an agent
of good will. She was not an agent but had gone to live with the Rappahannocks because she had married one of their young men.

Sir George was confused, so confused that he did nothing. This was another bitter disappointment. I bided my time.

In May, Captain Argall, who had ferried De La Warr back to England, sailed up the river with a fleet of six tall ships and a warrior to take the colony from Percy's faltering hands.

The new leader was Sir Thomas Dale, a general who had gained a reputation for bravery in the Flanders War. He strode ashore surrounded by fifty liveried attendants, much as Lord De La Warr had before him. But there was a difference in his measured steps and the fiery glances he cast to right and left.

"He's been warned," Tom Barlow said. "He's been told about the First Supply fleet and the Second Supply. And Lord De La Warr has told him what happened to the Third. He knows now what to look for."

Dale was an imposing figure, long in the legs, broad in the chest, florid-faced, with a blunt chin half-hidden in a starched white ruff.

"He looks determined," Tom Barlow said. "That's good. De La Warr had to give up before he ever got started. There's hope, I think."

I had few predictions or hopes concerning Sir Thomas Dale and what he could or would do to save the perishing colony, though I was most certain he'd
fail as the others had failed—that hundreds of colonists would die as they had died in the past. Yet I did have one consuming thought. It was that Humility and I would not be among the dead!

We followed Sir Thomas and the three hundred newcomers to higher ground where the church had stood.

He gave no speech and refused the Reverend Bucke when prayer was suggested. He strode through the ashes of the five-cornered garrison, talking to himself, then repaired to his flagship and was not seen for days.

Rumors spread. Appalled by what he had seen, Sir Thomas had given up. He was making ready to leave for London. But on the third day he reappeared and called everyone together. In a short proclamation, reading quickly in thin but arrogant tones, he imposed martial law upon the colony.

Death was the penalty for disrespect to the king or his representatives. Thieves would be branded or have an ear lopped off. Those who robbed the house where food was stored could expect to be tied to a tree and left to starve. Deserters would be burned, broken upon the wheel (he had brought a wheel with him), staked out in the weather, or shot.

The lord marshal's laws were strictly carried out.

By summer, all the laws had been broken and all of the culprits punished, including Francis Pearepoint, gentleman, who lost an ear for announcing that he had signed a contract to search for treasure, not to wield a hoe. And Emma Swinton, who was tied to a tree and
forced to stay a week in rain and shine, in an effort to silence her clacking tongue and dire predictions.

The laws of Marshal Dale became known as the Laws of Blood. Yet good things came out of this reign of terror.

Deciding that Jamestown was located in an unhealthy place that was very difficult to defend against Indians or Spanish raiders, he began a town some miles up the James, which he called Henrico, in honor of noble Prince Henry. Carpenters worked day and night to build it.

The new town lay on a high bluff beside the river, surrounded on three sides by the richest of farmland. Tom Barlow was one of the first to apply for land and the second, after John Rolfe, to receive a parcel, a small one beside a pretty stream that ran quietly into the James through a grove of yellow pines.

Tom cut down trees and, with the help of neighbors whom he promised to help later on, built a one-room cabin with a stone fireplace ten feet wide. The men built it in a week, working on Sunday, which distressed Tom greatly.

He came down the river in his canoe and invited everyone at the fort to partake in a housewarming. Emma Swinton and Humility and I were the only ones from the fort who came.

It was a cloudless day. Wildflowers were blooming on the land Tom hadn't yet tilled and the air smelled of them and yellow pines.

We stood outside the cabin, the three of us from the fort and several soon-to-be neighbors who were working on another cabin in Henrico. Tom read something from the Bible, we all prayed, and then we went inside. I gasped and exclaimed how beautiful it was, the way the pine logs fit together so snugly.

"The fireplace's big enough to roast a whole deer," I said to please Tom, who was perspiring with pleasure.

"You'll not do much cooking without a trestle and some tongs and big iron pots," Emma Swinton said.

"Those will come later," Tom said. "Maybe soon, with the next supply ships."

"If you're alive by then," Emma said. "I heard Indians when we were outside. Hiding in the trees somewhere."

"They're curious."

"Waiting," Emma said, twisting her mouth.

"To make friends," Tom said.

"Waiting for the right time to scalp you and burn your cabin down," Emma said.

Tom smiled and pointed to a musket sitting in a corner, "I'm ready, and everyone in Henrico will be ready," he said, "and the Indians know it."

Cheers went up from seven men. Their wives, I noticed, were silent.

Tom served the currant cake I had made and a jug of milk the others brought. A young man played a harmonica and Tom played his viola, but nobody
danced except Humility and me. The rest, being mostly members of a strange sect that thought dancing sinful, looked on with disapproval.

A little later, the Henrico people trooped off through the woods together, the men shouldering their primed firelocks. Emma, Humility, and I went down to the canoe.

But just before we pulled away, I remembered I had left my cake pan, the only pan I owned, behind. I slipped out of the canoe and ran back to get it. As I came out of the cabin, holding the heavy pan across my chest, Tom was by the door.

"You look pretty in the doorway," he said, "with the sun bright and shining in your hair. But you look pretty anywhere, rain or shine."

I closed the door and started off down the path that led to the river. Tom took the pan and fell in step beside me.

"We've known each other for some time," he said, taking a dozen steps to say these few words. "I've been thinking, since the cabin is finished and everything's ready except a few pots and things, that it would be fine for us to be man and wife together."

We were nearing the river. I took the pan from him and was silent.

"I guess it's a surprise," Tom said, "my speaking this way."

I was not surprised. He'd been thinking about marriage for a long time, not just since the cabin was
finished. Since we landed in Jamestown. Before that, in Bermuda. And perhaps even before that, on the ship. The cabin gave him the courage to speak.