The Lost Duchess

by Jenny Barden

  ‘Tell me about your childhood,’ Kit had asked. ‘I’d like to know everything. You had an older brother, didn’t you, like me?’

  ‘He was my stepmother’s son by an earlier marriage, not a real brother in blood. I hated him at first for taking away my father’s attention, but I suppose, thinking about him now, it was not his fault that I felt unwanted. I missed my mother. I was only six years of age when she died; he came to Fifield not long afterwards …’

  Emme had spoken freely as Kit had asked. She’d told him about all the inconsequential incidents that had made an impression on her in growing up, about her games and her pets, as much as she could remember about her mother, and her father’s kindness before he grew cold towards her. She spoke about the foal he had given her that he’d allowed her to name.

  ‘I wanted to call her Quince Jelly Biscuit because those were the nicest things I could think of when I was very small. My father laughed and agreed to Quince as a name, but my pony was always Quince Jelly Biscuit for me. I’d call her that when no one was listening. Her favourite treat was pippin pie.’

  Kit had smiled, listening to her, close enough for her to feel him.

  ‘Not quince jelly or biscuits?’

  ‘No, I should have called her Apple Pie.’

  Kit was the first person she had told about her pony’s name. She told him that as she told him everything that had mattered to her, and much that didn’t, just as he told her his stories, about his father who beat his older brother and was drunk most of the time, about the favouritism that he wished had never been his, the mill that was meant for him, which now belonged to his sisters’ husbands, because everyone had thought him dead after his capture by the Spaniards; his mother who’d died of a broken heart believing him dead; his brother, Will, who had always tried to look after him; and the fall in the forge that had left him with the scar over his palm.

  What were they doing in telling these stories? She felt she knew, though neither asked the other why. The stories were a testament to each of their lives, full of the irrelevancies of memory that had shaped them as people: unique, inconsequential, meaningless to everyone except themselves, but now meaningful, because, for each of them, in the telling was their essence, and in sharing they were giving, becoming part of the other. These were memories known to no one else, memories that would otherwise be lost if they died, leaving their lives to fade like the play of light on a wave. But now Kit’s stories were in her heart, and hers were in his, imprinted for so long as the other would live. They would be with one another always, and if they both should die then, surely, they would be together wherever God placed them next.

  ‘Remember I love you,’ he had said. ‘The more I learn about you, the more I am with you, the more I love you. No matter what we face, wherever I am, I will never stop loving you. Always remember that.’

  ‘I will remember,’ she had said, wanting to throw her arms about him and sob out her bitter secret. But there had been others very close, Kit’s son amongst them, and Kit had charge of the tiller, and she had feared to distract him. Her answer had been just a murmur.

  ‘I will always love you.’

  She meant every word, but would he really always love her? Would he love her when he knew the truth?

  You have not told him everything.

  That was another voice she heard, her own voice deep inside.

  You have not told him about your shame.

  Could she? How could she? She did not know where to begin. All she knew was that he would find out if and when the time came for him to take her as his wife, if there was ever peace, if he meant what he had said. When they were joined in body, then he would discover her secret.

  He thinks you are untouched and that is a lie.

  She had told him everything except her greatest hurt, but, every time she tried to confess, the words dried up and her tongue would not work. She could not tell him now when she might so easily be overheard; that was her present excuse. But she was also afraid. What man’s love could survive the knowledge that another man had been before him where he should have been first? The single flower that had been hers to offer had already been picked and thrown in the dirt. She should have been a maiden for Kit; he was perfect and she should have been pure, yet she was pure no longer and now never could be. However hard she tried, whatever she did, nothing could bring her maidenhood back.

  If you die now he’ll never know.

  Perhaps she was destined never to tell him. If she died before he took her she would die a maiden in his eyes. Maybe that was what was meant to happen; if that was so, then even in death she would find sweetness.

  She looked towards him where he rowed, now sitting alongside Manteo in the stern of the boat, his face drained by exertion, but still vital and handsome. Her gaze took in everyone, seeing her friends as they might appear to strangers: a curious mixed company, motley, travel-worn and weary. There was Rob and Tom Humphrey, Jim Lacy and Jack Tydway, Manteo and the man she loved – a young Cimaroon and a lanky foundling, a scraggy soldier and a burly gaolbird, an Indian who was a gentleman and a privateer who was betrothed to her; then include herself, erstwhile lady-in-waiting, wearing pantaloons and a plated brigandine. What would savages make of them? Curious, perhaps, but of little consequence. They carried few arms, and little of any value beyond the tools and trinkets that Kit had brought along as gifts. Yet they also carried the hopes of England, of Sir Walter Raleigh and the Queen. Probably, almost certainly, they were heading for destruction, but she was not afraid. She feared for the Planters in the city, for Georgie and Virginia – prayed for them all to live. But with Kit she felt invulnerable. Nothing could hurt her so long as she could cling to a belief in his love; without that now, for her, life would not be worth living. Merely looking at him gave her sustenance; he was manna for her eyes. She feasted on the sight of him, as much as she could see: from his golden hair swept back from his brow to the strong angles of his short-bearded jaw. Maybe he sensed it. He looked up and smiled at her, and in that instant everything cleared. She heard all the sounds around her: the lapping water and creak of wood, and the singing that seemed to be coming from the mist.

  He heard the singing too. From the glance that passed between them, she knew it at the same moment. A shimmer of anxiety troubled his face. She turned to scan the nearest shore, dark below the coals of the sunset in the west, but nothing was visible beyond mist and water and ancient moss-draped trees.

  She moved from the prow to the stern, climbing over the benches, and Kit called for the rowing to stop.

  ‘Do you hear it?’ she whispered to him.

  ‘Yes.’

  The singing wavered through the silence as they drifted slowly back downstream, enigmatic and poignant, unearthly and lonely.

  Kit turned to Manteo looking more worried than ever she’d seen him.

  ‘What kind of singing is that?’

  Manteo answered in an undertone.

  ‘It is a song of welcome.’

  Kit’s shoulders relaxed.

  ‘They won’t attack?’

  ‘Not yet. They are welcoming us back from the dead.’

  From the dead. What did that mean? She moved closer to Kit.

  ‘Do they think we are ghosts?’

  He held her hand.

  ‘Yes. But that should help us.’ He gave her hand a squeeze. ‘Ghosts cannot be killed.’

  He spoke to everyone as they turned to face him. ‘We’ll anchor mid-river tonight and set a double watch: two hours on, four off. Rob and I first, then Tom and Jim, then Jack and Manteo. In the morning we’ll hear what the Choanokes have got to say beyond singing us lullabies.’

  There was a ripple of muted chuckling before the men began to row the pinnace back and away from the shore. The anchor was dropped as darkness closed, leaving only black shadow and the starry sky, and the grey sheen over the wide water. Emme sought some privacy under an old sail thrown over the boom, shared a meal of corn biscuit and dry venison, then sett
led in the prow where Kit led her to try and sleep.

  ‘I have this for you,’ he said, pressing something like a small string of beads into her hand.

  ‘Pearls,’ he explained. ‘But only black. I bartered for them from the Croatans.’

  She didn’t ask what he’d given for them, and she didn’t mind that they were black. What did that matter now? They felt as smooth and flawless as any she’d ever seen.

  ‘Will you help me tie them on?’ she asked, holding the pearls in place then drawing his hand to her wrist ‘Tie the string fast. I never want to take it off.’

  He did, and then she bade him wait while she took the knife from her girdle and cut at the lace of her left cuff. Once it was free, she gave the strip to him.

  ‘This is for you. I’m sorry I have nothing better.’

  He held out his wrist to her. ‘Tie it on for me and make the knot tight.’

  She did as he asked and they held one another quietly. The gifts would be their love tokens in pledge of their promises. Nothing more needed to be said.

  He kissed her cheek in a tender way that no one else would have noticed under the cloak of the night.

  ‘Now try and rest.’

  ‘You know I will not.’

  ‘Count the pearls until you reach the end.’

  She smiled to herself at that, since now there was no end to the loop they had made. But that is what she did, running the pearls through her fingers one after the other, imagining arrows raining down like the shooting stars in the heavens, only to vanish as completely because she had the pearls in her grasp and each was full of the shielding power of his love. Even so, the singing troubled her and sleep would not come, but sometime before dawn she must have sunk into a dreamless doze because she woke with a start to find Kit stroking her shoulder.

  The singing had stopped.

  *

  They approached the city as the mist fled wraith-like from the water and early sunbeams filtered between the cypress trees. The light had a quality that Kit had observed before in cathedrals, slanting down from unseen openings, hazed as if through the smoke of candles, entering a vastness framed by countless pillars that were buttressed tree trunks reaching to inestimable height, their branches bearing tattered flags of moss that gleamed golden where the sunbeams struck. Fur-cloaked priests led them along a path like a cloister, the view framed by the arches of creepers, the passageway trailing through courtyards of swamp, shining under the few rays that penetrated so far, black in the shadows, or crusted by weed glowing green like mown grass. Their first sight of Choanoke was the brightness of a clearing around a low hummock of higher ground, then the palisade that surrounded it, over twice the height of a man: an impenetrable wall of tree trunks driven into a depthless mire, their tops hewn to spikes. The entrance was a double ribbon of stakes leading to the outermost dwellings, mostly bow-framed huts covered in skins or rush mats, some of which were rolled back to air raised sleeping platforms. Beyond these was an inner palisade with another concealed entrance, and behind this wall were great longhouses, and a higher building on stilts with a curious terrace-ridged pointed roof. To this place the priests led them. Kit reckoned the number of the city’s inhabitants as he followed the cloaked men up a ladder to the high floor inside. There must be close to fifteen hundred; he’d counted seventeen longhouses, each large enough to house sixty people, along with at least a score of smaller shelters. The whole place was so well protected that it would take an army to overpower, but the strength of the defences suggested the Choanokes feared attack. They must have enemies amongst other savage tribes; perhaps that would help the City of Raleigh.

  Kit looked round at the others before entering the gloom within the strange building. No one spoke. They all looked apprehensive, Emme most of all. Her shock-wide eyes revealed fear bordering on terror. He wanted to soothe her but something about the eerie silence held him back from uttering a word. This place was sacred, he felt sure. It smelt of death.

  Once inside, the mats that had been raised for them were lowered back down. The darkness was blinding, and, in the time it took for Kit’s eyes to adjust, he heard nothing but ragged breathing. No one moved. Gradually he made out forms in the shadows: ghostly shapes revealed by a spectral luminescence that somehow managed to seep through the covers, stripped of colour and reduced to shades.

  He saw bodies. Many of them. Before him was a long row of men laid out side by side, legs stretched to an unnatural length, faces shrivelled around empty eye-sockets, lips parted like gaping slits baring the smiles of skulls covered in masks of leather.

  Emme gasped and gripped his arm.

  He covered her hand.

  The priests began to sing, deep and low with powerful resonance, voices rising in wailing harmony, circling in pitch, soaring in mood. The song was uplifting and infinitely sad. They seemed to direct it at something, then Kit saw what that was: a man attired completely in black apart from a blaze at his breast, sitting, ankles crossed, knees apart, his dress accentuating his shoulders as if he was wearing a padded doublet, open at the chest, and with a black hat on his head of the high-crowned kind that he’d seen no Indian wear. Was the man Spanish? English? Was he alive? He merged so completely into the shadows that Kit could hardly discern him. His face was invisible.

  Manteo came close, bringing his own smell of hide and resin. He placed his hand on Kit’s shoulder and whispered into his ear.

  ‘This is Kiwasa, guardian of the dead. He watches over former kings.’

  ‘What is he?’

  ‘He is between our world and theirs.’

  ‘Does he see us?’

  ‘Yes, though his eyes are wood.’

  ‘Ah.’ Kit exhaled. ‘He is a statue.’

  Kit stared harder at the manikin, imagining the thing was moving, head turning as he edged nearer. He must have imagined it; no statue could move unaided. Emme was still with him, clutching his sleeve. He felt her shivering and murmured reassurance.

  ‘It’s just an effigy. This place is no more than a wicker tomb.’

  ‘The smell …’

  ‘The smell of mortality; it could be worse.’

  She huddled closer as the singing enveloped them. Suddenly it ended.

  A hand slid over his throat as fur brushed his cheek. The pressure on his throat was slight but it made his blood run cold. He imagined the hand tightening, two hands strangling him.

  A priest spoke quietly.

  ‘He wants you to tell him the message,’ Manteo said.

  ‘What message?’

  ‘The message that you hear.’

  He heard nothing. The priest was silent, waiting. Why him? Why the question? He closed his eyes and steadied his breathing. Quell his fear. Nothing could be achieved without trust. Empty his mind, black within black. He spoke what he thought.

  ‘There must be an end to mistrust.’ He turned to Manteo. ‘Tell them that.’

  Manteo translated, and the priests spoke softly between themselves.

  Perhaps the message was what he most wanted from the Choanokes, perhaps what he hoped they wanted. It seemed to satisfy the priests; they said no more and ushered everyone outside.

  The priests led him on towards a huge longhouse at the heart of the clearing. The others trooped with him, Emme on his left side, Manteo on his right; Rob followed with Tom Humphrey, Jack Tydway with Jim Lacy. They marched inside the immense barrel-roofed structure and assembled at the centre before a line of seated elders. Scores of people were at either end, all crammed together, squatting cross-legged; there must have been several hundred all told. Light streamed in from the side Kit faced where the middle strips of matting had been rolled up to the roof. The elders sat with their backs to this light, their faces in dark shadow as they gestured for everyone to sit. Kit took his place opposite on a wide row of mats, and Emme joined him, soon followed by the others. They spread out their gifts, mostly tools and beads, things that the Choanokes might find useful and prize, and all the while Kit searched f
or someone who could be Menatonon, but there was no sign of a cripple amongst the cloaked and aged men. He cast a quizzical glance at Manteo but his friend shook his head.

  ‘He is not here,’ Manteo murmured.

  Kit spread his hands and fixed his attention on the elders.

  ‘We come in peace in hope of friendship. We offer these gifts of steel and glass. If the weroance Menatonon is here, we ask to speak with him. We wish to renew our alliance with the great tribe of the Choanokes.’

  The elders conferred amongst themselves, roached heads bent together, occasionally glancing over their shoulders. Smoke rose from their pipes to writhe like transparent snakes in the sunbeams above. None of the elders was distinguished in dress beyond the fringed deerskins they wore like the robes of the ancients. They had no tattoos or ornamentation, no strings of pearls or emblems of leadership. Were any of them weroances? It didn’t seem likely. They looked uncomfortable, as if they were waiting for someone else to take charge. Kit saw one of them puffing on a pipe and staring into the shadows at the north end of the longhouse. He looked there too. There was someone approaching. A hum of anticipation rose from the people all around; then, at a single word of command, everyone got to their feet. The elders stood, and Kit motioned for his company to stand also. Absolute silence fell as a figure strode forwards, passing through the crowd which opened up before him, forming a passageway to the place where Kit and his party waited.