Tidewater: A Novel of Pocahontas and the Jamestown Colony

by Libbie Hawker

  Early on the second day of paddling, Opechancanough passed into a forest of long, straight, water-blackened poles: high posts that marked the locations of fish traps. A team of men in a large, broad-bellied canoe worked on one trap, some paddling against the slow but steady current to hold the boat in place while two others hauled the trap to the surface. It broke the water with a rush, the fish inside thrashing furiously. One of the fishermen nodded in respect as Opechancanough passed. The werowance raised a hand in acknowledgment. The men working the fish trap bore the tattoos of Werowocomoco. He had nearly arrived at his brother’s capital.

  Soon the town of Werowocomoco itself came into view through its veil of trees. The pale patchwork of bark-covered houses showed here and there beside cleared green circles of garden space. For the fifth year running, the rain had been scant, and the gardens were not as lush as they might have been. A pale, thick cloud of woodsmoke hung among the treetops, white amid the clear green of new leaves, a drifting shroud like clots of old spiderweb.

  One of Opechancanough’s men called from a nearby canoe. “Ho! Who’s that?”

  Another group of dugouts came gliding from the mouth of a narrow tributary. Opechancanough recognized at once the sinuous curve painted on the men’s shields: the snake of Quiyo-co-hannock. His stomach went tense and sour. Their tanx-werowance, Pepiscunimah, paddled at the head of the lead canoe. Even at a distance, Opechancanough recognized him. He would have known that overly large, beak-sharp nose and tiny, crow-black eyes at a thousand paces. He spat over the side of his canoe.

  He nearly spat twice when he recognized the figure seated behind Pepiscunimah. She did not paddle, but sat regally still, the puccoon adorning her fine, haughty face glowing crimson in the morning light. A cloak of dun and russet feathers was draped over her shoulders. She did not turn in the direction of the Pamunkey fleet, though Opechancanough felt certain she knew he was there, knew he was watching her.

  Tsena-no-ha.

  He struck the water hard with his paddle. He had not seen Tsena-no-ha since the day she left him, walking from his house straight-backed and silent, unflappable as a werowansqua with all her possessions in a fine basket strapped to her back. No words could make her stay, no gesture. Her mind was made up.

  What more could the cursed woman want? I am the werowance of Pamunkey. What greater honor can a woman aspire to, than to be the wife of a powerful chief?

  There was no greater honor, Opechancanough told himself. His paddle cut deep into the river, and a bitter taste rose in his throat. The only better station she could hope to reach was as a wife of Powhatan. And yet look at her, proud as a he-grouse in Pepiscunimah’s canoe, as if marriage to that squirrel-faced fool is something to boast of.

  Hard as he might paddle, Opechancanough could see he would not reach the shore before the Quiyo-co-hannocks. Pepiscunimah’s dugout reached the bank of Werowocomoco, and the women and children waiting on the shore set up a welcoming cheer. Opechancanough’s jaw clenched in rage.

  He watched as a handful of Pepiscunimah’s men leaped from their boats and made their way to the lead canoe, splashing in the shallows. Two of them bent over Tsena-no-ha’s immobile figure. Opechancanough’s brow furrowed as the men lifted her in their arms, carried her well up the shoreline, and deposited her on the driest part of the strand.

  “Hah,” he spat in disgust.

  He dug in with his paddle; his men followed the lead, bringing the Pamunkey canoes up to a terrible speed, the rush of a war party going boldly into battle. “Ho!” one of the men shouted in warning as they sped into the shallows. Opechancanough only paddled all the harder. His canoe launched itself onto land with a tremendous scrape, grating as loud as springtime thunder against the mud and rock of the shore. Powhatan’s women and children leaped back, shouting in surprise, and then subsided into uneasy laughter, sensing Opechancanough’s dark mood. He did not care.

  Pepiscunimah, towing his boat sedately onto land, cast a tentative smile in Opechancanough’s direction. The man’s look was half-apologetic and more than a little humble, yet Opechancanough still saw the smallest spark of triumph in the close-set eyes.

  “Pamunkey always makes a dramatic arrival,” said Pepiscunimah good-naturedly.

  “Not nearly as dramatic as your wife’s arrival,” Opechancanough shot back. “Ho, Tsena-no-ha! Have you shattered your ankles? Can you not walk? Shall we fetch you a cradleboard to ride in?”

  Dutifully, the Pamunkey men laughed.

  Tsena-no-ha pretended her ears were as broken as her legs. She never flinched from her easy conversation with Powhatan’s favorite wife, as unconcerned as if Opechancanough’s taunt had been the yips of a lone coyote in the brush.

  But Pepiscunimah did not hide his scowl. “Do not presume to speak to my wife, Opechancanough. Even if she was once yours.”

  “Do not presume,” Opechancanough rejoined, “to speak to a chief, tanx-werowance.” He brushed past Pepiscunimah, trailing his warriors in a restless, bristling pack. Before he strode away, he caught a look of helpless anger and a red flush of shame on Pepiscunimah’s narrow face. The sight was as delicious as cool nut milk on a hot day.

  But almost as soon as the victory came, it vanished again. Opechancanough recalled the message he had received from Powhatan just a few days after Tsena-no-ha had walked away forever. Brother, the messenger had quoted, be assured that Pepiscunimah’s audacity in taking what was yours will not go unpunished. From this day forward, he is no longer a full chief, but only a tanx-werowance, and his territory and people are subject to my primary rule.

  Opechancanough still did not know whether he felt grateful to Powhatan for demoting the wife-stealing louse or angry over the gesture. I should have been the one to dole out what Pepiscunimah deserved, not my brother. And yet, what could he do? Powhatan was the chief of chiefs. The mamanatowick did not choose to wield absolute authority often, but when he did, not even a dear brother would contradict him.

  The Pamunkeys reached the mamanatowick’s great house while the Quiyo-co-hannock were still beaching their canoes. If he could not arrive at Werowocomoco first, Opechancanough would at least be the first man to greet the chief of chiefs. The young man guarding Powhatan’s door nodded his acknowledgment, and Opechancanough ducked through the door flap and entered his brother’s longhouse.

  The rough, homey odors of pine smoke and burnt cornmeal surrounded him. The curved black bones of the house’s interior stretched down the length of a long, smoke-darkened hall, lit by the heart fire and by pillars of light streaming down from smoke holes in the arch of the roof. Thick eddies of motes swirled and glimmered in the shafts of white light. Past the neat rows of bedsteads for the chief’s many wives, beyond the stacked baskets of tribute from his many territories, still to be sorted and approved, was the stooped form of Powhatan himself, sitting on his high bed, leaning forward as if to listen to an unseen speaker. As Opechancanough watched, Powhatan threw back his head, sending long silver hair swinging across his shoulder. The boom of the old man’s laughter traveled down the length of the hall.

  Opechancanough made his way toward his brother. One of the wives was there in the shadows of the great bed, daubing puccoon onto the old man’s leathery hide. The woman was young and alluring, with enchanting, wide-set eyes and large breasts still round and high. Opechancanough could tell from her graceful, gentle movements that she must have a singularly seductive touch. Yet Powhatan ignored his wife. It was the figure who stood beside the heart fire who held the Great Chief’s attention.

  Even with her back to him, Opechancanough recognized his niece at once. Only Amonute would stand so before Powhatan, straight and unshakable, square-shouldered, a little she-bear on its hind legs, roaring. He saw with a hot ripple of pride that the girl had acquired her first tattoo: the crossed bows of her home tribe, Pamunkey. The mark stood out blue-black on the sparse meat of her wiry shoulder.

  “But y
ou must let me serve at the meeting, Father!”

  At her audacious words, Opechancanough heard a gasp of disbelief. Another girl, younger than Amonute, crouched near a bed, shrinking against a stack of furs as if she wished to disappear inside them.

  “Bah,” said Powhatan. He waved away Amonute’s insistence, though his eyes shone with appreciation for the girl’s display of courage. “You won’t be needed here, child. The women can use you at the ovens, baking cakes for the feast.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Amonute airily. “I shall bake all the cakes for the feast, and won’t your werowances be impressed! ‘Mighty mamanatowick,’ they’ll say, ‘truly you sow the strongest seeds of us all. Why, this girl you sired is so strong, she’s baked her toughness right into this bread, and we’ve all broken our teeth off on the crust. Now we look as fearsome as bass.’”

  Opechancanough stepped into the firelight beside Amonute in time to see the girl pull her lips over her teeth. She flapped her mouth open and closed in imitation of a landed fish, eyes rolling wildly.

  “Won’t the Massawomecks be terrified of your fearsome bass warriors,” she said. “Let us all paint minnows onto our shields!”

  Powhatan bellowed with laughter. He beat his knee with one red-painted fist. “My Mischief,” he said warmly.

  “So you see, it would mean the tragic downfall of the Real People if you were to force me to bake cakes. Better I should pour water in your great house, where I could do no harm to your influence.”

  “No,” Powhatan said, still chuckling, “this meeting is no place for one as young as you.”

  Opechancanough laid a hand on the girl’s shoulder. Amonute looked up at him, startlement flushing her wide, high cheeks. “Now, Amonute,” he said, “you know it won’t impress your father’s guests to see a common girl serving, and one not even old enough to wear an apron at that. Leave serving for the royal-born women. You have your place at the cook fires.”

  Amonute frowned; the beguiling little cleft in her chin deepened.

  “Besides,” Opechancanough went on, nodding toward the other girl, the one huddled shyly against the sleeping furs, “you already have another duty of great import, do you not? Unless I’m a fool, I’d say this child is yours to care for. You cannot leave her alone while the werowances meet.”

  Amonute’s frown soured into an open scowl. She turned away abruptly, snatched up the shy girl’s hand, and hauled her to her feet. “Come, Nonoma.”

  When they had disappeared down the length of the dim hall, Powhatan pounded his knee again. “That Pocahontas of mine. She is a sight to warm an old man’s heart.”

  “You give her too much leeway. She is too stubborn by half, Brother.”

  Powhatan tilted his head in gracious acknowledgment of the criticism. “I blame her Pamunkey blood.”

  “You ought to get control of that one before she causes trouble. Okeus save you if she inspires all your women and daughters to clamor that way, to make demands.”

  “Oh? And how ought I to bring her under control, eh?”

  “Marry her off.”

  “She’s not old enough for marriage,” said Powhatan soberly.

  Opechancanough sensed in his brother’s sudden gravity a real attachment to the child. She was valuable to him: her antics cheered him, lifting the weight of the mantle of power if only for brief moments. One day the Chief of Chiefs would grieve to send this common-born daughter away, as he grieved over parting with none of his more valuable daughters.

  “It will not be many more seasons before she is old enough to marry,” Opechancanough said gently. “You must consider this soon.”

  “Ah!” The fond grin returned, the fist pounding the knee. “Perhaps you want her, is that it? You are in need of a new wife, I know. When she comes of age, perhaps I’ll give her to you.”

  It was a bluff, of course. The girl’s low birth made her no fit consort for even a tanx-werowance, let alone the chief of a territory as great as Pamunkey. But even knowing Powhatan’s offer was made in jest, Opechancanough cringed.

  “And strap me to a wildcat like that one? Okeus save me! No, settle her down with a good hunter in some distant town, far on the fringes of Tsenacomoco, where she can stir no trouble into anybody’s stewpot.”

  Powhatan sighed. “I suppose it will come to that someday. May the god grant it’s not too soon.”

  One after another, werowances filed into the great house, made their shows of respect to Powhatan, and settled onto mats around the fire. Wowinchopunck, chief of the Paspaheghs, was nearly the last to arrive. He wore a quiet intensity about him like a winter cape, heavy and enshrouding. Opechancanough clenched his fists in sudden apprehension. Although he sampled nut milk and smoked fish on dumplings as the werowances gathered, he tasted nothing of the delicacies. His thoughts were all on Wowinchopunck and the tale of the visitors. When the meeting was opened with prayer and tobacco, Opechancanough puffed at the pipe too quickly in his state of distraction. He coughed and sputtered, and a few of the other werowances fired disapproving glances his way.

  At last, with Opechancanough fidgeting like an undisciplined child, Wowinchopunck began his recitation.

  He told of the first meeting with the tassantassas, of the strange structures they built, and of the way they displayed fine tools openly but refused to trade. He told of the altercation over the hatchet, and of how he had deemed it better to withdraw to safety than to remain and feast with a people as unpredictable and touchy as the tassantassas.

  Wowinchopunck told of the next visit, when he sent a small but elite troop of warriors in his place. He related that the tassantassas refused to host the Paspahegh men as overnight guests—the very pinnacle of rudeness. Then the visitors doubled their offense when one of their number, a short man covered in wiry yellow hair, lured them into a shooting contest.

  “The arrow shattered on their metal clothing,” Wowinchopunck said.

  “Shattered?” said Powhatan. “You cannot mean it.”

  “Like a dropped pot. I spoke with men who saw it with their own eyes. They are serious men, not given to exaggeration. These tassantassas have clothing that arrows cannot pierce.”

  “Iron?” said Opechancanough. “It’s so heavy. How could any man wear iron, let alone men as small as these?”

  “No, not iron. Something new. I have seen a little iron myself. It is black, but this metal is bluish, or pale gray like a sky after rain—like the mamanatowick’s hair. And it was shiny where it was scuffed or polished. Not iron.”

  “And you say they refused to host your men for a night’s sleep?” Powhatan’s voice was low and dark, meditative.

  “They were obviously very strongly opposed.” Wowinchopunck shook his head. “My men say they sneered at the idea, and some of them spat on the ground. They shouted at one another over the very suggestion. They clamored like crows over a carcass.

  “But what is worse than their rudeness is the magic they have. We fell on them in the night, so angry were we over their poor manners. They had . . . something, some gun, I think, larger than any gun that can be imagined.”

  Powhatan frowned. “Did you see it?”

  “No. But we heard it. It split the air like a hundred claps of thunder and it made our ears ring for hours afterward. The Okeus knows what kind of a weapon it might be. It’s terrible, whatever it is. Of that I am certain.”

  Opechancanough raised his eyes across the flames of the heart fire. The bright, bead-small eyes of Pepiscunimah stared levelly back at him. A knot twisted and swelled in his gut. The disrespect of it all. No one knows how to properly respect a man anymore, not that tanx, and certainly not the tassantassas . . . “If these strangers can show no respect for the Real People,” Opechancanough said loudly, almost a shout, “then let us rid ourselves of them now. Pick them off like lice from a hide, before they dig in and make themselves impossible to rout.”


  Wowinchopunck raised a hand. “I agree.”

  Pepiscunimah cast a casual glance toward Powhatan. “Mamanatowick, I am only a tanx, but I recall our first meeting about these visitors. I remember how Opechancanough agitated for peace with the white men. Did he not say that we could use them, could trade with them for goods that would make us powerful? Why does he change his song now, I wonder?”

  “If I fail to alter my song when the drumbeat changes,” said Opechancanough, “then I am nearly as great a fool as Pepiscunimah.”

  Pepiscunimah’s mouth twisted in a sour smile. “Women love fools, or so I hear.”

  “All right,” Powhatan broke in. “Enough of this feud. Our purpose is serious, and much larger than any conflict between the two of you. Now, tell me, all of you, what are your thoughts?”

  Each werowance offered his opinion in turn, and the knot in Opechancanough’s gut tightened more with each successive comment. Far more chiefs raised their hands in favor of pursuing trade than killing the tassantassas, or even driving them back across the sea to the distant land from which they’d come.

  “This is short-sighted,” Opechancanough said with a growl. “Men who don’t understand basic respect can never be trusted.” He flicked his eyes toward Pepiscunimah. “I now regret my words from our previous meeting. I regret that it was I who put this idea into your minds.”

  They went on debating for several hours. It was a futile exercise; Opechancanough could see that none of the men who wanted trade could be convinced by Wowinchopunck’s account that the tassantassas were too dangerous to bother with. And he could not be convinced of their benefit. He felt Powhatan’s eyes upon him many times, and wondered whether with this debate the mamanatowick hoped to reason his brother into consensus. Why? He can act without my blessing, can pass down any edict he pleases. All my life my brother has been the strongest man I’ve ever known. Does he feel the need for my approval now that he finds himself at the tail end of life? The thought fanned the flame of Opechancanough’s rage. He glared up at his brother.