Sweet Savage Eden (50 page)

She hated the nights. There was no way to avoid hearing Powan and her sister, and there was no way to avoid lying there and wondering if Daniel was all right, if he missed her, if he was being loved and cared for, if he was being fed and tended gently. And there was no way not to wonder about Jamie. If he was alive, he would come for her. He would have to. Whether he cared for her or not, he would have to come. It would be part of his code of honor. He would have to save her from the Indians … just so that he could send her home to England. Alone.

Somewhere in the third week of their captivity, things took on a subtle change, and Jassy was never quite sure just when it had happened. The noises she heard at night began to change. Powan had apparently determined to seduce rather than ravage. Jassy heard Elizabeth panting and gasping and emitting soft moans and whimpers, and then startling cries. Realizing what she heard now, Jassy closed her eyes in mortification and turned to the wall of saplings, gritting her teeth through the night. Once she had twisted to awaken and see in the firelight the two of them standing together, gleaming and golden, and Powan tenderly stroking her sister’s nakedness. Ashamed, Jassy closed her eyes and rolled again, keeping
her eyes tightly closed. She heard whispers that meant nothing, yet meant everything. She tried not to listen, but she could not help feeling an anguished longing deep inside and wishing that time could be erased, that she could be lying with her husband as Elizabeth lay with the Pamunkee.

Powan called Elizabeth his golden bird. He was coming to care for her very deeply, and Elizabeth was coming to blush when the Indian’s name was spoken.

Jassy was growing desperate to escape.

On the twenty-fifth day of their captivity, she realized that by mid-morning there were few braves about. The women were busy and were accustomed to Elizabeth and her being busy too. If they came back from bathing, then calmly walked away into the forest, they might not be missed for several hours, enough time to give them a good head start.

Elizabeth argued with Jassy. “We don’t know where we are!”

“The James River lies to the south of us. I need only find the river and follow it. I would have to find Jamestown. I can do it, Elizabeth, I can lead us home. I know it.”

“We will run on foot. They will come after us on horses.”

“We will hide. They will give up. And we might find white men in the forest, looking for us.” At last Elizabeth agreed.

The sounds in the darkness lasted longer than usual the night before they were to escape. Jassy thought that Elizabeth was telling her lover good-bye.

With the dawn, they went to the brook as usual. Hope brought them a turkey to pluck that morning, and Jassy whispered that they were going to escape. “Will you come?”

Hope thought about it for a minute. “No. If I am caught helping you, they will punish me as a traitor.”

Jassy did not ask what they would do to Hope. She didn’t want to know. She hugged the girl fiercely and promised her that they would meet again.

She waited another half hour or so, then tapped Elizabeth on the shoulder. They came out together and stretched, as if taking a brief break from their labors. No one paid them any heed. Jassy motioned toward the trail that had brought them to the village, and they calmly started walking along the dirt.

“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” Elizabeth whispered. “We will probably perish. We will be consumed by insects. What if we are struck by a venomous snake?”

“Save your breath and walk,” Jassy commanded her.

They had walked about an hour when they came upon the horses. Jassy grasped Elizabeth and pulled her into the bushes. One of the horses was a spotted mare. Jassy had seen it before. She had ridden upon it when Pocanough had abducted her to the village. “It is a hunting party!” she told Elizabeth.

“What will we do?”

“Just stay silent until they have passed us by.”

Even as she whispered, the Indians returned to their horses, leaping upon them. Jassy saw Pocanough. He wore rawhide boots up to his ankles, his breechclout, a band with feathers across his forehead, and nothing more. He was with five other men. He already had several pheasants tied over his horse’s haunches, brought down with his arrows.

The men all mounted. They laughed and joked, ready to ride on.

Suddenly Elizabeth gasped. Jassy heard the soft sound of a rattle. She looked around and saw that a snake, posing to strike, lay within range of the bushes where they hid. They must have disturbed the creature or its nest.

“Damn!” she cried in anguish, wrenching Elizabeth from their position and rolling with her far from the snake’s possible strike zone … and right into the path of the Pamunkee warriors.

When Jassy looked up, Pocanough had stopped his mount right before her, the animal’s hooves so close that he could crush her head any second.

He started to dismount. Jassy saw the malicious pleasure in his eyes. She leapt to her feet and ran.

She didn’t care about snakes or brambles or the insects or anything else; she ran in panic into the trees and through them. She heard Pocanough thrashing behind her.

She ran until her heart hurt and her lungs burned and her legs were in agony. She ran until she felt that her insides were bursting, and that she would die if she took another step. Still she kept running.

But the Indian knew his way, and suddenly he was in front of her in a copse instead of behind her. Gasping, clutching her heart, and inhaling desperately, Jassy reeled back. Pocanough smiled, leapt upon a fallen tree, and sprang for her, knocking her to the ground with the impetus of his pounce.

She screamed and twisted beneath him. He tried to subdue her, catching her hands. She escaped his hold and rent a long scratch down his cheek. That angered him. He slapped her hard, and she caught her breath, dizzy from the blow. He lifted his hand to slap her again, and she thought that that was it; she could fight no more. Her strength was deserting her.

Then suddenly, out of the clear blue, a pair of bronze hands set themselves upon the warrior’s shoulders, and Pocanough was wrenched cleanly and clearly away from her.

Jamie had been despairing, aware that he could never give up, but sinking lower into depression day by day.

Jamie had combed the peninsula. He had gone to Opechancanough, despite the massacre of the whites, and he had walked into the great chief’s village with such arrogance that the chief had let him live. Opechancanough had told him that Powan had his wife and her sister but that he did not know where Powan was. Jamie would have to find him. It would be treacherous. Yes, he had ordered the whites attacked. All of the whites. He’d had a vision. They would keep coming and coming, and there could be no peace. The Indians would be absorbed
into the earth, and the great Powhatan Confederacy would be no more. “The English must leave. My people know this. If they find you in the forest, James Cameron, they will probably kill you.”

“You forget, Opechancanough, that I learned from the Powhatan how to move in the forest. I must have my wife. You know that. A man must do this thing.”

Opechancanough agreed with him. He gave him supplies.

But the days passed, and he could not find the village where Powan was residing. He came upon tribes of Chickahominies, and though the Indians were not hostile to him, they could tell him nothing. Finally, the day before, he had ridden Windwalker into the domain of a curious old medicine man, and the medicine man had suggested that he try deep in the woods.

He had been riding since then. With the noon sun high overhead, Jamie had rested by a stream, tossing rocks into the water and torturing himself with his imagination. Opechancanough had ordered whites killed, men and women. The Powhatans did not mind taking female prisoners, but even then, it was possible that they would grow angry and kill the prisoners. And if they had not killed her …

He had learned that it was a warrior named Pocanough who had taken Jassy and Elizabeth. Powan was his chief, but Pocanough was a wily and temperamental young brave, and it was possible that he had demanded his way, that he had demanded the hostages he had taken.

His face contorted with pain, his body tensed rigidly, and he fought the piercing wave of agony that assailed him as he imagined her with the Indian brave. If she fought him, he would hurt her. If he lusted after her, he would take her brutally. If she kept fighting, he would beat her, until he broke her or killed her, one or the other.

Self-reproach paralyzed him, then he forced himself to breathe, knowing that it would stand him little good now. He had to find Jassy and Elizabeth.

And if nothing else, he had to kill Pocanough. He could
not bear what the man had done to his house and his home. He had slain his housekeeper, had taken his wife. Jamie went rigid again with the pain of it.

It was then that he heard the scream.

He did not know at first if his fears and dreams had collided and he had imagined the sound of the scream. Then it came again, closer, and he leapt to his feet, pulling out his knife. He looked around, and he heard the sound of foliage snapping and breaking. He stepped back, into the shadow of wild berry branches.

Then he saw the Pamunkee burst into the clearing. Grinning with an evil leer, the warrior waited in silence.

Then Jassy appeared.

Jassy …

Not as he remembered her.

Her eyes were incredibly blue against the soft tan glowing on her face. She was clad in buckskin, in an Indian maiden’s dress, short and sleeveless, tied at the bodice with rawhide. Her hair was free and flew out behind her like a golden pendant as she ran. She was as wild and panicked as a pursued doe, beautiful and sure and lithe, and he ached from head to toe the moment he saw her, and he longed to call out her name.

The Pamunkee brave laughed and leapt from a fallen tree to accost her, bearing her down to the ground.

She screamed and screamed again, clawing him. And he struck her.

Jamie saw red. His temper split and flew, and he saw the red of the blood that had stained his home. He saw the hot red of the noonday sun, and of the fury that threatened to blind him. He sheathed his knife at his calf and leapt forward, placing his bare hands upon the brave and dragging him from his wife. The young buck was no coward, and no weakling. Jamie’s anger was a powerful force, and he had been proven in many a battle. He slammed the Indian down to the ground and landed upon him. Again and again he drove his fist into the proud face. Then the Indian bucked in a frenzy beneath him, sending Jamie flying.

“Jamie!”

He heard the cry of alarm in her voice, and the concern in it was as sweet as nectar. He wanted to look at her. He wanted to sweep her into his arms, to touch her, to hold her. He could not. He needed to concentrate on the battle before him.

Jamie landed hard, but he quickly regained his footing, balancing upon the balls of his feet while the Indian charged him. He ducked, letting the Pamunkee use his own force to crash hard against a tree. Then Jamie came at him again with a rain of blows, to his lean, hard gut, to his face, to his gut again, to his chin, to his eye. The Pamunkee struck back. As Jamie reeled, the Indian pulled his knife. Jamie raised his own, and they faced each other, circling warily in the small clearing. The Indian smiled through a slit, half-closed eye. “Cameron,” he said. “Cameron.” Then he continued slowly in his native tongue, and Jamie understood every word. The white woman had defied Powan and escaped, and so now Pocanough could have her. He had found her again. And Jamie would be dead.

Pocanough lunged forward. Jamie met the drive and smashed down hard on the buck’s shoulders. He fell forward on his knee, and Jamie brought his knife to the Indian’s throat.

Suddenly a shot was fired.

“No!” A voice said firmly.

Jamie stiffened, holding still. He straightened and turned around but kept his knife flush with the Indian’s throat.

Powan had come among them. He had ridden his big bay into the clearing, and he had ordered one of his men to fire off a musket round.

He had Jassy seated before him. With wide, blue, tempestuous eyes she stared down at Jamie in anguish.

“I have come for my wife, Powan, and the mother of my son.”

“It must be done where men of the Pamunkee can see it,” Powan said. He looked with distaste at Pocanough. “She belongs to neither of you now. She is mine. If you both die in battle, she will remain mine. If one of you
slays the other in a fair fight before witnesses, she will then belong to the victor.” He looked to his men. “Take them both. They will fight tomorrow.”

Jamie dropped the knife. He could have killed Pocanough then, and he wanted to. But then they would have killed him. His only chance of getting Jassy back was to do it Powan’s way. When the Indian escort came for him, he walked along willingly. He did not look at Jassy as he passed her by. He felt her eyes upon him and wondered at her thoughts.

That night the Pamunkees prepared for their entertainment. They danced erotically before the fire, and many of the women, with designs drawn upon their bodies with berry juice, danced naked and enticingly, reminding him of the time that he had traveled with Captain Smith in his youth. It had been so long ago now.

Then he had been a guest. Now he was part of the entertainment.

They had taken him to the brook to bathe, and then they had dressed him in a breechclout. He sat before the fire at Powan’s side, across from Pocanough. They watched the dancing, and when the women had disappeared, the chief rose and told his people that in the morning there would be a fight, unto the death. If the white man survived, he was to take his woman and walk away unmolested. It was his, Powan’s, word, and it would be obeyed.

Then he and Pocanough were taken and tied to posts. Two men, naked and heavily tattooed, began to dance around them, carrying claws of the brown bear. Suddenly the men raked the claws down the backs of the men who would fight. Jamie felt his flesh tear, and he ground down hard on his teeth, determined to make no sound. A Pamunkee would not cry out, and he, too, had to win this fight as a guest-member of the great Powhatan Confederacy. Inwardly he screamed, for the claws started at his shoulders and tore down to the small of his back. He felt the blood surge from the gashes.