Tidewater: A Novel of Pocahontas and the Jamestown Colony

by Libbie Hawker

  Wingfield turned to stare out at the shore. He made no move to direct the men. Smith sidled up to him.

  “Unfortunate,” Smith said quietly.

  The glare Wingfield turned on him was sharp and dangerous, thick with loathing.

  “I do think,” Smith murmured, trying for Scrivener’s sake to put some deference into his words, “that now would be an ideal time to open the box.”

  “The box,” Wingfield burst out. He closed on Smith, and Smith thought for one welcome moment that Wingfield might strike him, might give him the chance to retaliate. Then the man reined himself in and seized the point of his beard in a shaking fist. “An excellent idea, John Smith.”

  The box was sent for, and once the men’s wounds were tended, Wingfield unsheathed his dagger. With a flourish, he broke the wax sealing the lock and pried open the lid. The parchment inside was tidily rolled. It hissed as it came open in Wingfield’s hands.

  “By decree of the Virginia Company,” Wingfield read, voice booming, “a ruling council of seven is appointed. The council shall consist of: Edward-Maria Wingfield, gentleman and shareholder . . .” He took a long and savory moment to stare into Smith’s eyes. “Bartholomew Gosnold, gentleman and investor; John Ratcliffe, gentleman and investor; Christopher Newport, captain of the Susan Constant; George Kendall, gentleman and investor; John Martin, gentleman . . .”

  Wingfield stopped short. The men on the deck shuffled, jostling one another, murmuring.

  “And?” Scrivener prompted.

  “And John Smith, soldier and adventurer,” Wingfield concluded. His mouth twisted into a sour, hate-filled leer.

  Smith stepped to Wingfield’s side. He held out his wrists to his fellow councilman, presenting the fetters lock-side up. He had come to a new world, and John Smith would never wear chains again.

  THE FIRST NAME

  Amonute

  POCAHONTAS

  Season of Cattapeuk

  The house of unmarried women was quiet for once, emptied of the usual bustle and song. The heart fire glowed with a steady, low flame, sending up a lazy tail of deep-blue smoke that dispersed into the sooty haze darkening the arch of the ceiling. The banked coals gave off just enough light to reveal the black curve of well-bent saplings, their repeating arcs as perfect and strong as drawn bows. Here and there along the dim walls new panels of pale bark showed, replacements for those the winter ice had damaged. The new bark stood out sharp and bright against years of smoke stain, the tender bare flesh of the panels still slightly damp and spiced with the odor of rising sap.

  Bedsteads lined the walls, sturdy platforms of young saplings deftly interlaced, springy and soft as moss. Each bed was piled with soft mats woven of yet more bark, the strips pounded fine until they were as velvety as a moth’s wing, warm and plush as the pelt of a rabbit. On one of these beds, half-covered by the drape of a deer hide, lay a girl curled in sleep. She was deep in shadow, breathing heavy and slow, following the dim blue trail of a dream. The heart fire’s fitful light picked out the curve of her strong, tawny limbs, folded like the long legs of a fawn at rest. The light played over the planes of her face, the regal broadness of her cheekbones, the strength of her chin, still rounded by youth. Her lips moved silently. In the dreamworld she chanted, and her voice was as loud as thunder. A paint pot rested on the packed earthen floor of the house, its lid flung carelessly aside. The girl’s hand dangled from the bed above it. Her fingertips were still shiny with the mixture of bear grease and pigment. Her arm was streaked, half-unpainted, vivid with the tracks of her wandering thoughts.

  A voice called from outside the house’s dark walls. “Amonute!”

  One yellow finger twitched; the sleeping girl’s spirit wavered on the edge of her dusky path.

  “Amonute!”

  The voice was at the door now, and the girl murmured, turning away from the voice in unconscious protest. Her hand trailed a smudge of ochre along the edge of the deerskin.

  The house’s door flap lifted. A ring of bright springtime light burned suddenly, then the room darkened again as a slender figure stooped to fill the doorway. The flap closed with a thump.

  “Sleeping! I should have known.”

  The girl on the bed squeezed her eyes shut, gritted her teeth.

  “I know you’re awake now, Amonute,” said the other girl. She was older by two or three years, on the verge of womanhood. Her breasts had only just begun to stand out from her bare chest, and she still wore the hairstyle that marked her as a child: shaved close at the temples and fore, the back never cut but braided prettily with the beads and copper bangles she would one day sew onto her marriage apron. She advanced on the bed. “You’re lazy as a rahacoon with the bloat. Hah,” she said in disgust. “You’ve made a mess of my yellow paint.”

  The girl on the bed kept very still.

  “You can’t fool me. You aren’t asleep, so get up. The canoes are arriving, and if you’re not there on the shore to greet the guests, you’ll catch the worst trouble. Amonute!” She leaned closer and whispered another name, a better name, far more fitting and well earned. “Pocahontas!” Mischief.

  Pocahontas opened her eyes. Her smile was slow, eloquent with self-satisfaction.

  “You are insufferable,” the older girl said. She picked up the pot of yellow paint. “You’re not even properly colored. Stand up and let me fix your arm. It’s nothing but streaks.”

  Pocahontas stood. She yawned, stretching her arms above her head, and held still for the paint.

  “Our father will beat you if he sees you looking like this.” The older girl smudged hastily with the paint, covering Pocahontas’s skin from shoulders to wrists.

  “No, he won’t.” It was said as a matter of fact, and the other girl bit her lip and frowned as she painted. They both knew it was true.

  “Your braid is tangled and ugly.”

  “Stop fussing, Matachanna.” Pocahontas pulled her long braid over one shoulder, running her hands along it in an attempt to make it tidy. Many black strands had worked free while she slept, and now it was wild as a patch of weeds.

  “You look worse than a bear’s behind in a mudhole. Father won’t stand for it—not today, not even from you. Let me get my hair oil.”

  Matachanna pulled a leather bag from a peg driven into a nearby sapling beam. She rummaged through it until she found the clay pot that held her best oil. A few drops trickled into her hand and she rubbed her palms together. The warm herbal scent asserted itself over the ever-present sapor of smoke. She stroked Pocahontas’s braid, tucking the stray locks into place among the few shell beads and copper rounds with gentle care. When she was finished, Matachanna took a long chain of pearls from her peg and looped it several times around Pocahontas’s neck.

  The younger girl lifted the pearls in her fingers. “They’re pretty.”

  “I want you to wear them today, little sister, and remember you’re the daughter of a werowance.”

  Not merely a werowance; their father was Powhatan, the Chief of Chiefs, the mamanatowick who had done what no chief before had accomplished. He had united the Real People, had made them one great tribe, using every advantage the god Okeus had given him: strength, strategy, ferocity, cunning, diplomacy. The Real People were no longer the ragtag collection of widespread villages and suspicious clans they had once been. Now they were a People in truth, acting as one, fighting as one, hands interlocked in friendship. It was Powhatan, her own father, who had remade the world—her father who commanded each chief, each werowance of every territory for ten days’ journey in any direction. It seemed to Pocahontas that his power was limitless.

  She clutched the chain of pearls in her fist. Her hands suddenly trembled with anticipation. “It’s an important meeting Father has called, isn’t it?”

  “Only the Okeus knows,” Matachanna muttered, tamping the lid tightly on her pot of yellow paint. “I certainly
don’t.”

  “Werowances from all the territories . . .” Not a single chief would be absent. She had seen how the women of Werowocomoco worked at their cornmills and their sieves, how they heaped baskets high with round boiled dumplings and smoked fish. She had heard the impatience in their voices as they gossiped and shouted over their work. It was no ordinary feast they prepared, no mere salute to the season or routine welcome. It was many times greater than any festival Pocahontas had witnessed in her young life. Surely this meeting of the werowances was many times more important than any that had come before.

  “There will be dancing,” Pocahontas said, eagerness pushing through her thoughtful mood.

  Matachanna blew through her lips, a loud, rude buzz. “When is there not dancing?”

  “And,” Pocahontas paused significantly, a bold, nearly mocking grin lighting her face, “I suppose the priests will come, too.” Even in the dim light of the heart fire, she could see Matachanna blush.

  “Come along, Sister.” Matachanna hooked her own painted arm around Pocahontas’s elbow and dragged her toward the door.

  The midmorning light was impossibly bright. It cut unfiltered through the tops of mulberry and oak trees, where the green buds had just begun to unfurl their brilliant new foliage. The sky was well clouded, but its height and paleness promised a clear afternoon to come. The town of Werowocomoco, the largest and finest of Powhatan’s villages, hummed with activity beneath the steady glare of the springtime sun. Here and there, the expanse of forest was broken by cleared garden patches, where bare black mounds of earth stood waiting for seeds and digging sticks. The arches of homes, spaced at regular intervals, peeked from between oaks and smooth-skinned maples, lifting their heads slyly through the leaves like old women straining to catch a whisper of gossip. A pall of woodsmoke hung, trapped within the tangle of branches.

  In the ample space between houses, women of all ages bent to their tasks. Across one clearing, a group of girls poured water into a clay pot full of finely ground walnuts. They squeezed the rich grains in their hands, dunking their fists and splashing in time to the chanted refrain of the nut-milk song. They laughed as they worked, until an older woman emerged from the door flap of a nearby house to scold them for the wet mess they were making. A string of little boys passed, too young to draw bows but old enough to carry long skewers of smoked fish. They waved them in the air as they marched, as proud as if the fish were the feathers and bright ornaments of warriors’ braids. From somewhere close by came the monotonous rasp of millstones grinding dried corn into flour.

  Pocahontas and Matachanna made their way through the woodland toward the gray glimmer of the river. As they drew closer to the bank, they met more of the Real People, dressed in their most beautiful leather aprons, their faces and shoulders, arms and backs, freshly painted in colors as bright as birds’ wings. A tense bustle of pleasant anticipation ran like a deer through the town, bounding and bright. Laughter and singing filled the wood.

  They passed the final stand of saplings at the wood’s edge and dropped down onto the riverbank. The river was especially broad here, flat and blue-gray as a polished stone. Beyond the curving green margin of tall grass and muddy shore, the odd tree rose from the water itself, overtaken many years ago when the river had widened and swayed in its course. The water smelled richly of salt with a faint undercurrent of decaying vegetation, for the nearby sea’s tide had turned. Soon the river’s surface would ripple and eddy, seeming to slow its rush as the sea flowed ponderously inland past the great village of Werowocomoco.

  Matachanna had been right: the canoes were arriving, or the first of them, at any rate. It would take all day for every werowance and his retinue to make their way down the cold veins of the rivers to the shore of Werowocomoco. By nightfall, when the feasting and dancing would begin, the muddy riverbank would be so thick with dugout canoes that a child could walk across them without getting the soles of her bare feet dirty. The first guests had rounded the inland bend, and now paddled steadily toward the wide, arched cove where the girls and the rest of Powhatan’s family stood. Pocahontas squinted against the day’s glare, but the canoes were still too far away, and the light on the water too bright, to make out any marking that might tell her which territory had responded first to Powhatan’s summons.

  She heard the tinkling of copper bells on the shore behind her, and turned in time to see Winganuske come through the saplings like a doe emerging from a mist. No one could deny that Winganuske was a beautiful woman. Tall and straight-backed, she moved with the flowing, supple grace of one who is entirely assured of her place in the world. Her face was as round and luminous as a summer moon, her expression always quietly amused. Beneath the fringe of her hair, black eyes gazed calmly out from her imperious mask. When she stepped among Powhatan’s wives and children, they rippled around her in a quiet flow, halting their excited conversation to stare in admiration—or envy—at Winganuske’s beauty. To all the natural charms the god Okeus had given, her Powhatan had added beads of white and cream and purple-black, looped about her neck in ropes as thick as vines. She wore a formal dress of doeskin tied over one shoulder, fine and soft and pale as dry sand. The smooth skin of her bared shoulder was painted red, not with cheap bloodroot dye, but with the thick, luminous crimson of valuable puccoon. She was hung all about with long, fluttering fringe, an ostentatious waste of valuable leather, and her ankles and wrists chimed with copper, a music as constant as birdsong. Above the vertical black bars tattooed on her chin, Winganuske’s mouth curved in a fraction of a smile.

  Of all the wives he possessed, Winganuske was Powhatan’s favorite. Everybody knew it. Even if the mamanatowick hadn’t covered her in fringe and puccoon and copper bells, her status as favorite was made obvious by the two children who toddled after her onto the shore, trailed by the cousins and aunts who served as nursemaids. Two children, and Winganuske was still here in Werowocomoco, at Powhatan’s side!

  It was customary for a wife to be sent back to her mother’s village once Powhatan got her with child. There, she would bear and raise his daughter or son while the mamanatowick kept her in comfort from afar, plying her with fresh bark strips for her home, with the finest clay for her pots, with corn and hides and beads. When the child had seen five or six winters—old enough to be useful—he was returned to Werowocomoco to be raised at Powhatan’s knee by his female relations, and the wife was free to remarry any warrior she might choose. She would even have the mamanatowick’s fine gifts for a dowry. In this way the Chief of Chiefs had assured the loyalty of every village in the region. Now, after many years of marrying freely and often, there was hardly a family among the Real People that was not related to Powhatan by blood.

  But Winganuske had not been sent back to her mother’s hearth when she grew big with the first of her children. She had borne the baby there in Werowocomoco, and then another, and soon all of the mamanatowick’s wives had accepted the fact that the heart of their husband was well and truly conquered.

  All of Powhatan’s wives were reconciled to Winganuske’s irresistible power. But not all of his children.

  Winganuske passed the girls, trailing a cloud of fragrant oils and the birdsong of her bells. She stood at the water’s edge, gazing out at the approaching canoes. Pocahontas turned to Matachanna with a deliberate, regal slowness and a pinched frown. The girl’s mocking dignity was so severe that Matachanna had to press her lips together to keep from bursting out with laughter.

  “Stop!” Matachanna hissed under her breath, once she could control her merriment.

  Pocahontas circled her sister, pacing out measured, stately strides, one hand pressed to her heart in a gesture of deep sincerity. A few of Powhatan’s gathered wives snickered.

  Matachanna kicked Pocahontas’s ankle.

  “Ouch!”

  “It serves you right. If Winganuske catches you mocking her, she’ll . . .”

  “Tell Father?
” Pocahontas grinned. The only person who stood anywhere near Winganuske in the mamanatowick’s affections was Pocahontas. But while his favorite wife had won the chief’s heart with her beauty and bedside wiles, Powhatan’s favorite daughter had won his heart with her jesting and humor, her pluck and strength of spirit. It never failed: when Pocahontas found herself in a pot of hot stew—as she often did; not for nothing was she called Mischief—a well-timed jest, a wry smile, and her laughing father forgave her on the spot.

  “Look,” Matachanna said suddenly. “I can see the paint on the warriors’ shields. It’s the Appamattuck!”

  Across the expanse of river, wider than three felled trees laid end to end, Pocahontas could make out the hide shields hanging over the boats’ sides. Each was adorned with the black image of a shambling bear. The Appamattuck would receive the honor of being the first to come to the mamanatowick’s call.

  Pocahontas bounced on her toes. A large, blocky shape was seated in the fore of the nearest canoe. The features were as clear as the painted bears: a face severe with rough lines, thin-lipped and deep-eyed, decorated with a woman’s tattoos; the hair shot with silver, cut straight across the forelock in a woman’s style. Opossu-no-quonuske, the werowansqua, female chief of the Appamattuck. She was sister to Powhatan. Even at a distance, she shared her great brother’s intensity in her dark-eyed stare.

  The lead canoe beached. Opossu-no-quonuske rose. She was as tall as any man and nearly as broad-shouldered, a force of might even in old age. The sun broke through the clouds and shone on the black feather cloak tied about her shoulders. The light rippled over the cloak in bands of blue and violet iridescence. She had all the presence and majesty of a god, as if she had stepped from the words of a priest’s sacred chant into the realm of mortals.

  “Oh!” Pocahontas breathed.

  Matachanna cut a narrow-eyed stare at her sister.

  “Look at her! She looks . . .”