The Lost Duchess

by Jenny Barden

  ‘He would; they couldn’t be missed.’

  ‘And was the boy Skiko then let go?’

  ‘I told you, I don’t know. Drake arrived a week later and we all left after the wrecking storm which carried away the ship that Drake was going to give us. We didn’t know then that Grenville’s supply fleet was close. We thought that Drake offered us at least a good chance of staying alive.’

  ‘But the boy was in the fort when you left?’

  Lacy turned to him with sweat beading over his sunburnt skin.

  ‘Why do you keep asking after that boy?’

  Kit gave Lacy a wry smile. ‘I’m curious, that’s all. I have a boy too. By a savage,’ he added. ‘But that’s another story. Tell me yours first.’

  Lacy sucked air through his broken teeth, and then shot Kit a look of concession. ‘Skiko wasn’t in the place where he was usually kept when we left, and three of Lane’s men didn’t make the final roll call. It’s possible they’d been sent to take the boy back to Menatonon. I never found out.’

  Kit balled his fist and pushed his knuckles against his brow.

  ‘Dear Christ, I hope he lived.’

  ‘So do I, by all the saints. We never meant that boy any hurt. I hope those men left behind are still alive too, and those of Coffin’s company who survived Wanchese’s attack. But it don’t look good for any of them, do it?’

  ‘No, it doesn’t look good.’

  Lacy drank and handed Kit the tankard that he’d almost drained empty. Kit finished it in silence. He looked back at Lacy, feeling the Irishman’s remorse though, heaven knows, the damage that had been done was not Lacy’s fault.

  He beckoned for Lacy to follow him and left the fort for the central clearing.

  Once he reached the shelter he shared with Rob he asked Lacy to wait by the entrance, then he rummaged inside for the brandy he’d promised. He found the keg by his sea chest under a pile of possessions he’d never use: spurs and a bridle, nether-stocks and a ruff. He pulled out two sleeves with lace cuffs and handed them to Lacy along with the keg.

  ‘Alawa might like these,’ he said, thrusting the sleeves into Lacy’s hands then placing the keg at his feet.

  He didn’t wait for Lacy’s reply. He’d seen Emme walking by.

  ‘Mistress Emme!’ He paced towards her, not sure what he’d say, but knowing he had all the information he was likely to get. He was more certain than ever that now she had to go.

  She looked at him with wide dark eyes that both appealed and drew away. The next moment she had turned her back on him, and he felt the sting even while he accepted that her distancing would make his task easier. She no longer cared for him; he was sure of that now, but he still didn’t know how to begin talking to her. How to gain her attention? Should he reach for her? He never knew. She was like an unbroken filly, calm one moment, bucking the next, as unpredictable as the wind and as volatile as quicksilver. Sometimes he felt as if she could not stand to have him touch her, but there’d been other times when she’d seem to yearn for his caress. That was all in the past. She would not wish for his comfort now.

  He walked in front of her.

  ‘I have something to say to you,’ he began, and gestured for her to follow him to a place where they could be alone, round the back of the Dares’ house facing the nettles, the spot where they’d spoken before.

  ‘You should know the truth of what has happened here …’

  She kept a step away from him and looked down.

  ‘What truth?’

  11

  Leave-taking

  ‘If thus thou vanishest, thou tell’st the world It is not worth leave-taking.’

  —Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare, Act 5, Scene 2

  ‘Emme!’

  The cry brought Emme running, cutting into her brooding over what Kit had told her about Roanoke’s dark secrets. The future looked bleak, but her fear for it was forgotten at the sound of Mistress Dare’s scream.

  Emme found her mistress doubled over, the floor wet beneath her skirts, and she knew that the lady’s time had come, her waters had broken, and she must now play her part in earnest to help her mistress be delivered.

  Gone was any nicety. She did not baulk when Mistress Viccars waddled in, one of the older dames and a mother, who started giving orders as soon as she arrived to fetch extra bedding, boil water, take away soiled sheets and a chamber pot, bring cloths and candles, prepare the swaddling bands, thread a needle with catgut, and lay out the instruments that might be needed to assist with the imminent birth: scissors, bowls and two long-handled spoons. Emme had no idea why the spoons could be useful, but she did as she was told, and she made sure her mistress had plenty of broth to give her nourishment between her moments of distress, when she gasped and strained, and Emme knew the lady’s womb was tightening like a fist, harder and longer with each racking spasm.

  This was a woman’s greatest trial, the ordeal that had to come before the fulfilment of her life, if it did not end with her death or that of her baby. Emme was glad to help and observe, though some of what she witnessed made her stomach turn over, and her dread of the worst made her mind reel with prayers. One day, she too might suffer in agony before giving birth. If that happened, please God, may she not be alone.

  All night her mistress laboured, writhing, sweating, and pleading for mercy. By the first grey trace of dawn she was weakening, but her contractions were becoming greater. Emme was startled from a fitful doze by a piercing screech of pain.

  She shook the old dame awake, took her mistress’s hand, and wiped her brow with a sponge dipped in cool water. Mistress Viccars grunted and felt between the lady’s legs, shooing Ananias Dare away when he poked his head round the door, telling him to go back to bed.

  ‘Four fingers wide,’ the dame announced to Emme. ‘Nearly there.’

  What was four fingers wide? Emme guessed with a shudder, and tried to give her mistress some comfort.

  ‘All will be well. Breathe deeply and slowly.’ This was something she had learnt from talking to the mothers. They had told her that when the pains came, a woman should fill her lungs then let out her breath by small degrees. She found herself doing the same to help her mistress along, taking in great gulps of warm steamy air amidst the fug of bodily intimacy and the smell of sweat and blood.

  ‘Oh, God,’ the lady cried. ‘Help me.’ She bent forwards and bore down.

  ‘Push,’ Emme encouraged her. ‘Push harder.’

  ‘The child is coming,’ Mistress Viccars said. ‘You must pant now, Eleanor.’

  Another spasm took hold of the lady, and she clung onto Emme as if to drag herself off the mattress.

  ‘Hold her down,’ the dame instructed, while she worked with her hands where Emme had no wish to look, and her shadow loomed in the guttering candlelight over the spattered canvas screens.

  Emme held her mistress against the bolsters, feeling the lady’s muscles locking hard in another straining push.

  ‘Pant, don’t push!’ Mistress Viccars cried. ‘If you push now, you’ll tear.’

  ‘Pant!’ Emme repeated, and heard little gasping sobs as her mistress tried to obey.

  The sound that came next was like a net of fish spilling open, a slithering wet gush of squirming release. Her mistress moaned and cried in torment.

  ‘I’m splitting,’ she wailed.

  Emme turned in horror, seeing Mistress Viccars hold up a baby by the ankles that was blue and greasy as if covered in lard. Was it alive? It didn’t move. The next moment, the dame slapped its buttocks and the baby began to cry.

  ‘A girl,’ she announced. ‘A fine little girl.’

  The dame wrapped the infant in a swaddling sheet, and placed her on her mother’s breast, guiding the babe’s quivering mouth to her mother’s swollen teat.

  ‘Welcome to the world, little one.’ She stooped and gave Mistress Dare a kiss. ‘God bless you, Eleanor. You should be proud. What will you call her?’

  ‘Virginia,’ Mistr
ess Dare murmured, weeping and stroking her baby’s little head. ‘We’ll name her after her birthplace. Please tell Ananias that his baby has arrived. I hope he will not mind that ’tis not a boy.’

  ‘He will be a fool if he does,’ Mistress Viccars replied, and delivered the afterbirth while the babe was suckling. Then she cut and tied the cord, showing Emme how, and wiped Mistress Dare down, while Emme changed the sheets and tidied away the spoons that had not been required.

  What would Ananias think? Emme wondered as she went to fetch him. Would he be as happy as she was? She felt a rush of elation to have been part of such a miracle, despite the ordeal from which it came, the mess and the pain; she was sure she had never witnessed anything quite so beautiful before.

  *

  The storm still bowed the lolling pine tops but the rain had eased, and Emme needed release from the confinement of the Dares’ house, so she took the baby outside, wrapped up securely in a shawl, and sang a gentle lullaby while she rocked the bundle in her arms, and paced around the clearing that would, one day God grant, be the child’s city square. Little Virginia Dare was only a week old and already she’d turned her mother’s life upside down, and Emme’s too, demanding to be fed at all hours, coaxed, winded and soothed, insisting on those essentials that everyone around her took for granted: warmth, nourishment and a place to sleep, the reassurance of the familiar and the comfort of human touch. Emme felt sure that the lullaby was one that her own mother used to sing to her; it came without effort from the depths of her earliest memories, and as she murmured the song softly, with the babe against her breast, she felt what it meant even though the child was not her own.

  Lullay mine liking, my dear one, my sweeting

  Lullay, my dear heart, mine own dear darling.

  The newborn had narrowed her world and opened everything out. For a week she had barely ventured beyond the lower room of the Dares’ house, the place where she looked after the babe when her mistress was resting, where she slept, ate and washed; cooked, mended and prayed, often sharing with others, and attended to all the chores that could not easily be done outside on days like today, and yesterday and the day before, when the wind tore around as if it was trying to scrape the island bald.

  The babe tied her to this patch of earth, to this windswept island and makeshift home, yet in Virginia was the wide future with the promise of the new land in her name: the first child of English parents ever born in the New World, and already not the last since, only days later, Mistress Harvie’s child had also been born. This was the start of the next age, the first generation of the new country, and who knew what America would be like in generations to come. Perhaps, where there was now wilderness, there would be roads leading to fair cities, and farmland and villages: a land of peace and plenty for the blessed children of tomorrow. It was her privilege to be here now, holding that future in her arms: precious, vulnerable and perfectly lovely. God keep Virginia safe.

  She was still humming the lullaby when she felt a tugging at her skirts and looked down on the thick mop of hair belonging to young Georgie Howe, so blond it was almost white. Maybe he and Virginia would grow old together in this place. Maybe they would love and marry and have golden-haired children of their own, though, at that moment, Georgie plainly had other concerns on his mind.

  ‘Have you seen my marbles, Mistress Emme? Rob says we can play cherry pit since it’s too windy for fishing.’

  She laid her hand on the boy’s shoulder.

  ‘The bag is hanging on a nail by the logs under the eaves. It was getting wet where you’d left it by the path.’

  ‘Gramercy, Mistress Emme.’ He looked up at her and grinned, wrinkling his nose at the bundle she carried.

  ‘You won’t be leaving us, will you?’

  ‘No, Georgie.’

  She made an effort to put the boy at ease. He was still coming to terms with the loss of his father, and most of the time his insecurity kept him close to her. He slept on a pallet by the Dares’ hearth, and in the day he would often come for titbits from Emme’s cauldron, or to see if she had anything for him like the marbles she had baked from balls of rippled red clay. To most of the Planters he seemed like a well-settled boy, happy and full of mischief, but she understood his needs, remembering what it was like to lose a mother, never mind a father as well. So when the storm had raged at its height two nights ago, she’d let him pull his pallet beside hers, and when the Lion had been swept out to sea, she’d tried to comfort him with her own inner confidence. The Lion would return, she told him, and the Quartermaster, whom Georgie hated, and all the other stranded mariners, would leave for England, along with the Governor or one of the Assistants, and then soldiers would come to make sure everyone was safe, and they would carry muskets and be almost as brave as Master Kit, and, no, she would not go back with the sailors on the ship.

  ‘If anyone tells you differently they are wrong,’ she said to him. ‘This is my home now.’

  But she’d not said that to Kit.

  She ruffled Georgie’s hair and watched him scampering to the cottage, then, out of the corner of her eye, she noticed movement within the palisade. Men were emerging from the strong-house where most of their meetings were held. She saw them milling about in huddled groups, just as she’d often seen them before after recent assemblies. There was Kit standing with Ananias Dare and Dyonis Harvie, heads together, talking earnestly. Kit glanced across at her and the flash of affinity sparked between them, then he turned aside as Harvie spoke.

  She walked closer, rocking the baby in her arms. When Manteo passed through the gateway she moved forwards casually and showed him the sleeping baby.

  ‘Have they reached a decision?’ she asked quietly.

  Manteo gave her a wry smile.

  ‘Master Cooper has changed his mind and said to the Governor he will not go to England. Again the Governor has been asked to sail back. He alone can do this, the Assistants have told him. He must alert Sir Walter Raleigh because the city needs help. He must ensure that relief is sent here and not to Chesapeake.’

  ‘He has agreed?’

  Manteo shook his head. ‘He is thinking about it. Always he is thinking.’ He shrugged apologetically and strode on.

  Emme glanced back and noticed Master Cooper deep in conversation with several others. She counted all seven Assistants close to the walls of the strong-house, sheltering from the wind, and several other men besides who must have been involved in the debate. Only the Governor seemed to have been left inside, and doubtless he was deliberating over what to do next. The colony was in crisis, and again White was dithering. He should have been overseeing the strengthening of the defences instead of getting mired in interminable discussions about who should summon help. Kit had told her what he had learnt about the atrocities committed under Lane’s stewardship. The violence had shocked her, but she was not so horrified that she was prepared to abandon those who’d come to depend on her help, particularly Georgie and the baby.

  She held the baby to her shoulder and rubbed her tiny back while she walked, mulling everything over. She could never hope now for a future with Kit, not since it was obvious that she’d never mean as much to him as the Cimaroon woman who’d been as good as his wife. She and Kit were unmatched in every way. How she’d ever supposed they might be married she did not know. It would never happen. She could say that to herself and be sure of it for a while, begin to make plans for a future without him but near enough to see him settled and follow him through the advance of years. She could reconcile herself to never being wed, never bearing his children, never sharing his bed. But then grief consumed her: an overwhelming ache for all the promise she had lost, for the man who could never be replaced, the one who had touched her body and soul, the only one with the power to release her from her shadow of guilt.

  Burying her face in the baby’s blanket, she gave a small stifled sob, then she looked up and straightened her back. She would stay in Virginia and see the endeavour through, to the next ge
neration and beyond if she could. Kit might have supposed she’d be persuaded to leave by convincing her that she’d be doomed if she insisted on remaining, but if so he’d failed. Governor White would be able to petition Raleigh just as well as she could, and here she could be useful. The colony was her life now. Despite its blighted start, the blunted hope and endless toil, the settlers’ bold dream was hers: of building a better country in this raw new land. Having come so far, she wasn’t about to give up. She would remain at Roanoke, not as one with Kit, but near him. He must accept that this would be so.

  Let him think she was ready to go. She hadn’t protested against Kit’s plans for her, but neither had she promised to do what he wished. That had bought her more time; it had kept her in Kit’s confidence and allowed her to act freely. Kit had been reluctant to tell the rest of the colonists about the horrors of the past for fear it would weaken them and destroy their morale. She had agreed with that. What good would it do to give them reason to expect disaster? He had tried to alert the Governor but he’d seemed reluctant to believe the worst. He was a man blinded by his own vision, far more concerned with the minutiae of observation than with recognising evil in the wider picture. She and Kit would keep the knowledge to themselves, along with Lacy, Wright and Manteo who already knew what had happened.

  She walked calmly back to the Dares’ cottage, and settled little Virginia back with her mother since it was time for her next feed, then she filled a ewer with water, pulled her shawl over her head, and crossed back to the fort. When she entered the strong-house, she found what she’d hoped; the Governor was alone.

  John White had his head in his hands and a mass of papers strewn around him over the table by which he sat. A candle stump stood on a saucer in a congealed mound of wax. A board-backed clasped Bible lay near an inkhorn and quills, while indentures and other documents were strewn around the Governor’s elbows. His hair sprang in tufts between his long knobbly fingers, and his brow was a mass of furrows. She picked up some discarded pewter: an empty cup and a plate that bore the remains of a meal, around which a fly buzzed in circles. The only light in the room came from around ill-fitting shutters that rattled with each gust of wind. The Governor sat in shadow, unmoving in the sultry heat.