by Scott O'Dell
The insult rang loud in my ears, like a clap of thunder. I said nothing. It stunned me. I rose to my feet and faced her. Still I was silent. Suddenly I thought: She is right. I do feel calm. I do feel safe. While my accuser, while Tom Barlow and Pocahontas and Humility cowering under her blanket, face death.
I got to my feet and found the fireplace. I threw the ring into the fire. I went to my copper pan hanging on the wall; smoke had dimmed its luster.
I wiped the smoke off with my sleeve and looked at myself. The king's mark, the bloody smudge that had never left me since the morning it was placed there, that I had tried to wash away time after time, the sign no one on the ship or in Bermuda or Jamestown had ever been able to see, was gone.
Another fagot, the largest of all, came down the chimney and rolled into the room. The child was safe for a moment under her heavy blanket. But the others were at the door.
Pocahontas said, "The werowance is right about the guards. They will be here but, traveling in the dark, not before morning."
"We'll not last that long," Tom said. "I'll go outside and talk to the werowance. While I talk, try to slip away and hide in the woods."
He reached for the latch, but Pocahontas grasped his arm and, holding him back, opened the door and went out. A gust of wind blew through the cabin. The fagot that lay on the floor burst into flames. I gathered Humility in my arms. Beyond the doorway Pocahontas was talking to the werowance. I called to her but she did not answer.
Emma passed me, dragging the matchlock. At the door she struggled to raise the heavy gun, took careless aim, and pressed the trigger. Not a sound, not a word, came from the werowance as he toppled backward and lay very still.
Arrows and howls filled the night. One of the arrows was afire. I saw it coming through the sky. It was coming straight toward me, slowly, in a flaming arc. I had time to stand out of its way, but I could not move. For a fleeting moment I thought of the serpent ring and regretted that I had thrown it away. With a fiery sound, shedding sparks, the arrow grazed my cheek and passed harmlessly away.
Now that the werowance was dead, his warriors ran for the river, yelling as they went. We huddled in the moonlight, watching the cabin burn to the ground, taking half the tobacco plants with it.
At dawn the guards marched up from the river. Pocahontas heard them before they reached the clearing.
"Tell them I am eating my breakfast with Reverend Whitaker," she said, laughing as she ran.
"Good riddance," Emma Swinton said.
Ashes smoldered in the rising sun. The chimney stood tall and straight against the sky. But the pine logs hewn so carefully, the little window, the curtain, the big wide bed, were gone.
Tom said, "I have work to do."
"We have work to do," I corrected him.
He smiled and picked me up, with Humility in my arms, and whirled us around.
"When do we begin?" I asked.
"We could start today," Tom said. "Except the ashes are too blasted hot."
TWENTY-SEVEN
Pocahontas was back with the Reverend Whitaker by noon. Tom and I, worried that by some ill chance she might have been captured by the Mattaponi, went across the river to the parsonage. We found her eating a hearty meal of quail and cornbread, while the Reverend looked on with tight lips.
Later he prevailed upon us to stay for a service, it being Sunday. A goodly number of Henrico's settlers were there, including John Rolfe, who sat hand in hand with Pocahontas. The Reverend read from a Bible Captain Argall had brought from England.
I was so excited by what I heard that afterward I told the Reverend Whitaker that it sounded like the Bible I had grown up with—the New Testament William Tyndale had translated.
"Yes, that was a hundred years ago," the Reverend said. "This is a new Bible. It's just been published. King James chose some scholars and they put their heads together and brought forth this one. It's called the King James Bible."
"King James really did this?"
"It was his idea and he did it."
I wondered how the man who believed in witches and took delight in punishing them with leg irons and racks could be responsible for such splendor.
"But it sounds like Tyndale," I said. "It sings like his Bible."
"It should," Reverend Whitaker said. "More than half is Tyndale. I have counted. I spent time counting the Sermon on the Mount. Two hundred eighty-seven words in the Sermon are from William Tyndale.
"And he was burned at the stake for his labor."
Months later, when Tom and I were married, the Reverend Whitaker read from the new King James Bible. His pleasant voice soared through the chapel. The words possessed wings. They made up for the lack of flowers, the storm that piled snow against the parsonage walls and closed most of the roads so that few of our neighbors could come.
Two months later, when John Rolfe and Pocahontas were married, things were far different. The wedding took place in the Jamestown church. It was April and the church was filled with wildflowers. Bells announced the wedding. Everyone came, even the bride's uncle, Opitchapan, and two of her young brothers. The Reverend Bucke beamed from the pulpit.
Her clothes, unlike mine, were elaborate and new. She wore a white muslin tunic, a trailing veil, and a long pink robe. Around her neck was a double chain of pearls, a handsome gift from her father who, though he approved of the marriage, had proudly refused to attend.
Never had I seen a happier man than John Rolfe, unless it was my Tom Barlow. Pocahontas seemed happy, too. They went to live in a house on the James River, near Henrico, on land Chief Powhatan had given them. Rolfe called their new house Varina after a variety of tobacco brought from Spain.
With the wedding, a sort of peace settled upon the colony. Everyone was pleased, except King James. When he was informed of the marriage, he fell into a violent fit and accused Rolfe of high treason for marrying the daughter of a savage king.
With his hand on his heart, he angrily promised that no offspring of John Rolfe would ever inherit a foot of Virginia land. But when he was told that the eight chieftains of the Powhatan Confederacy were ready to sign peace treaties, he had second thoughts. When told that his picture would be scribed on copperplate and presented to the chieftains to wear round their necks on heavy copper chains, he was flattered. Grudgingly, he consented to Rolfe's marriage to Pocahontas, though she was still a barbarian and lacked a soul.
Varina was not far from our home, a short canoe ride and a mile's walk, so I saw Pocahontas every week or two. When she first moved to Varina she visited us and, unbeknownst to her husband, brought four of his special Spanish tobacco roots, which she showed Tom how to plant.
I was surprised when the Rolfes sailed off to England with their new son and a retinue of ten tribespeople, men and women. I was fearful that something might happen to her in that land of somber skies.
Word came from time to time about her, but long after things had happened, there being few ships from England at this time. A letter written by Captain John Smith introduced her to Queen Anne. She was a guest at court functions and lordly festivities. Her portrait was painted by a famous artist. Engravings were made of it and one was sent to Jamestown.
She was wearing a mantle of red velvet and a dark underdress festooned with gold buttons and a lacy collar. Banded with gold, her hat had the look of a jaunty coronet. Her black hair was masked by a reddish wig that I assumed must be popular among London's high-born ladies.
Gazing at the portrait, which had been hung above Sir Thomas Dale's fireplace, I was impressed by her beauty. But in her eyes I detected a hint of sadness.
Word came that she had grown tired of the gala affairs. Her health was suffering from London's damp air. She had moved to the country, where streams of courtiers unfortunately still visited her. It was here, we learned, that she met Captain John Smith again and was so overcome with emotion she could not speak.
Good news came. Her health had improved, and Ben Jonson's Christmas masque was performed on Twelfth-night in her h
onor. Two months passed before a ship brought word that she was ill again and had taken to her bed. Then we heard that she and her family had gone to Gravesend, at the mouth of the Thames, ready to leave on the first ship that sailed for Virginia. What happy news!
Tom and I were in the field planting a crop of timothy hay when the last word came. The April sun was bright. There was a sweet smell in the air of forest and sea, the sweet smell of Virginia in the spring.
The Reverend Whitaker brought the news. He came slowly up the path from the river. He looked at us a moment and swallowed.
"She has gone," he said. "We will not see her ever in this life again. But she is safe with God and one day we will see her." He stopped and could speak no more.
"Come and sit," Tom said.
"She is Virginia," the Reverend Whitaker said.
"Yes," Tom said. "There would be none without her."
We walked through the new-sown field toward the cabin. As we walked, I saw her at the cabin door. She was clear as the April day, standing with her long legs thrust apart, her hands on her hips, watching us with her Indian eyes.
* * *
Author's Note
Serena Lynn is an imaginary character, suggested in appearance and deportment by Mary Riverdale, a lithesome member of the king's court. Through Serena's eyes we see the founding of America.
Sir Walter Raleigh's two attempts to found a colony at Roanoke Island in Virginia, in 1585 and 1587, failed. Both colonies disappeared without a trace. But in 1606 King James granted a charter to the Virginia Company of London to found a colony, and the following year more than a hundred settlers disembarked at Jamestown. This was thirteen years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock.
In writing the story of Jamestown and Pocahontas, I have depended upon a number of books, booklets, tracts, journals, and letters. Among the booklets are A Voyage to Virginia in 1609, edited by Louis B. Wright, and Terry Tucker's Bermuda—Unintended Destination. Books I used were Otto J. Scott's notable biography of James I, the adventurous Three Worlds of Captain John Smith, by Philip L. Barbour, and Francis Mossiker's Pocahontas, a fine picture of early Virginia and the life of its legendary princess. Captain John Smith's original Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles, printed in 1624 when the letter s looked like the letter f, is hard to read but most rewarding. A streamlined edition, in which the letter s looks like the letter s, is now available.
Among the letters are ones written by Sir Thomas Gates, governor of Virginia; by Edmon Scott, a member of the Virginia Company of London; by Gabriel Archar, on board the Blessing, a ship in the Virginia Fleet of 1609; and by William Strachey, secretary-elect to Virginia.
Strachey's letter has an interesting history. It was written from Jamestown to a mysterious woman in London, whom he addresses as "Excellent Lady" and "Noble Lady." The letter contains a dramatic description of the storm that overtook the Sea Venture, one of the ships in the Virginia fleet. A description so dramatic that the Noble Lady passed the letter on to her friend, William Shakespeare.
Shakespeare, it is rumored, was so taken by Strachey's description of the storm that he had Miranda echo it in a scene from The Tempest:
"...wild waters in this roar, allay them.
The sky, it seems, would pour down stinking pitch,
***
Had I been any god of power, I would
Have sunk the sea within the earth or ere
It should the good ship so have swallow'd and
The fraughting souls within her."
John Rolfe's apology for marrying Pocahontas is taken word for word from one of his letters. The thoughts of King James on smoking are also reported word for word. Other details, difficult to put in the story, cropped up.
The settlers thought they were dying from some awful plague. We know now that they died from salt poisoning. Salt from the sea swept in with the tides and poisoned the river water they drank.
Admiral Sir George Somers, dear friend of Serena, sailed back to Bermuda, narrowly escaping death in a storm, only soon to die there. His body was sent to England, but his heart was buried on the island.
Henry Ravens and his crew were never heard of again.
* * *