Tidewater: A Novel of Pocahontas and the Jamestown Colony

by Libbie Hawker

  And you? Smith gave the tall one a questing look.

  The man stared levelly back and did not reply.

  Powhatan went on, through elaborate hand signs and a soft, almost lilting tone, to indicate that his people desired peace and friendship with the English. Smith raised his brows, offering an openly skeptical look.

  At that moment, with a sinister rustle of parting grasses, a fourth man erupted from hiding. Smith had only a heartbeat to step back, his hand groping wildly for the butt of his gun. The interloper drew his bow. The arrow hissed along the skin of his knuckle; he was so close that Smith could see the tiny red veins in the man’s eyes, the bead of sweat shining on his lip.

  Just as Smith found his gun, Powhatan held up a peremptory hand and barked a few quick words. At once the man with the bow subsided, head and shoulders stooping minutely in an obedient shrug. He vanished back into the grasses, melting from view like fog before the sun.

  “Sweet Christ preserve me,” Smith whispered.

  The three visitors had never flinched, and the bowman had given in too readily. Even through the rush of blood pounding in his ears, Smith could see the scene had been staged. Clever. How do you make a man who cannot speak your language believe that you hold absolute control over your people? You demonstrate that it is so.

  Smith did what came naturally to any Englishman in the face of great power—even an Englishman as cantankerous as he. He dropped his eyes and bowed deeply to Powhatan.

  The tall, unnamed Indian grunted his approval.

  “Wingapoh,” Smith said emphatically, slapping his hand against his pounding heart. He bowed again, nodded vigorously. “Peace.”

  Powhatan extended one wrinkled hand, all his fingers clenched in a fist but the first. Smith turned slightly, trying to identify whatever the chief pointed to. There was nothing behind him but the palisade wall and a few men’s heads peering fearfully from the tower scaffolds. Smith turned back to Powhatan, shaking his head in apologetic bewilderment. Naukaquawis pointed as well, and at last Smith extended his own hand in a similar gesture.

  The king stepped forward and hooked his finger with Smith’s. The skin of his hand was rough and warm. The old king said nothing more, but when Smith looked up into his eyes, the returned stare was rich with mistrust.

  Two days after Smith met with Powhatan, Captain Newport raised anchor on the Susan Constant, turned her east, and sailed for England. John Smith was not sorry to watch the ship vanish into the distant blue horizon. He had no fond memories of her cramped, stinking brig, but quite aside from his personal ire, the Susan Constant would soon return bearing supplies: fresh and varied food stores, tools to work the land, copper and glass for trading with the naturals. She would come back laden with men, too: eager new colonists, young and strong and, Smith prayed, commoners well versed in the practicalities of labor.

  At least, Smith hoped Newport would soon return. The supply ships the Virginia Company had promised still had not arrived, and the storehouse grew emptier by the day.

  A week after Newport’s departure, the men of the colony cast their votes and declared Edward-Maria Wingfield their new president. In the immediate wake of Wingfield’s appointment, the work of the fort’s construction all but ceased. Oh, a chink in the palisade wall might be patched with a sloppy handful of mud, and here and there a hammer lazily tapped at a nail, but Jamestown’s growth had stalled, just as Smith had feared it would.

  In truth, Wingfield was only partly to blame, and the weakness induced by a steady diet of gruel was scarcely much more the cause. Ever since Powhatan’s declaration of peace, all sense of urgency had drained from the men. Most of the men couldn’t even be motivated to hunt. All their hogs were dead or driven away, but Smith and his few allies could find no words to urge the men beyond the palisade walls. “Why bother?” they said. “The supply ships will be back soon.”

  At least one small blessing came of these days. Smith found his friends, a pack of true men with strong backs and iron constitutions. Save for Scrivener, they were to a man common born. They went on about the business of construction while the well-bred took their ease, retiring to the shade of roofed cabins to write letters and journals or shooting at stationary targets, a fruitless sport that added nothing to the supper kettle. Smith’s lot came to look on him as a fine leader, and some of them absorbed a touch of his resentment toward the strutting coxcombs who lorded over Jamestown. The gentlemen, however, far outnumbered the commoners, and, in the end, the pack of good, gritty workers could do nothing to motivate the gentlemen into honest labor.

  Deep summer arrived with a pale, hot sky. At sunrise and sunset great clouds of insects rose from the marshes of the spit, driving men into cabins or tents where they huddled to wait out the worst of the plague. At times the clouds of gnats did not disperse at midday, and the barrage simply had to be endured. The tiny black bodies were a constant bombardment, their gripping legs like starched threads, wings like veined slivers of glass. The dreadful itch of their stings could only be assuaged with packs of cool, salt-laden mud. But the scant hour or two of relief was hardly worth the stench.

  Smith would have given much for the secret of the Indians’ body paint. They often visited the fort now to trade, and he had observed on more than one occasion how the gnats avoided the Indians’ skin. It must have had something to do with the colorful paint they wore, but Smith could not convince them to bring any for trading.

  They did, however, bring food. Smith traded eagerly for it, and soon had laid in the supply house a small but precious store of smoke-cured fish, dried clams strung like beads on looped leather thongs, and a few baskets of corn. In return he gave the simplest trinkets, glass beads and copper bells, and here and there a digging hoe for particularly sweet corn or a quality selection of fish. The cheapest and most insignificant items seemed to delight the Indians the most. They paid especially well for beads of bright, showy colors.

  The naturals preferred trading with Smith to any other Englishman. He suspected their preference was due to his earnest effort to learn their tongue. The task came with great difficulty, but Smith worked at it tirelessly. By the height of summer he had picked up enough of the local language to understand the fort’s precarious situation.

  One evening as Smith crouched on his haunches, eyeing the spread of goods brought by a lone Indian of the Paspahegh clan, he remarked on the rather meager quantity of corn.

  “There will be much less corn soon,” the man said, a faint twinkle of guarded amusement in his eyes. His name was Taka-way-wemps, not a newcomer to fort trade, and one whom Smith knew to be as honest as any natural ever was.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Now is the season of nepinough, when the corn ripens. But soon comes the season of taquitock, Chawnzmit, when the gardens cease to bear. Then we go out and hunt.” Seeing Smith’s hesitancy over the rush of words, Taka-way-wemps mimed drawing and firing a bow into the distant trees.

  One of the Englishmen staggered past, groaning, clutching at his belly with one hand while he fumbled at his belt with the other. Taka-way-wemps gave a grunt, somewhere between sympathy and wry smugness, as he watched the man duck behind the barrels that blocked the privy pits from view.

  “Slow water,” Taka-way-wemps said knowingly.

  “What is this slow water? I don’t understand.”

  “Now, when the days have been hot for long, the river slows. It runs lower.” He held out a hand like a hard slab of wood, parallel to the earth. It sank toward the ground. “The good water goes, but the bad water from the ocean comes to replace it.” Taka-way-wemps’s hand rose again. “Makes men sick. Better not to drink it until the hunting season is done.”

  Smith shook his head in bewilderment. What fresher water could they hope to find than the great James River? To be sure, there were ponds and puddles in abundance on the muddy spit, but they were stagnant and full of frog spawn. Smith
could not be induced to drink from them unless he was dying of thirst.

  “Where do you find good water in”—he struggled to recall the naturals’ word for late summer—“in nepinough?”

  “From small, fast-moving creeks and from springs.”

  “There are no creeks or springs on this bit of land.”

  Taka-way-wemps broke into hoarse laughter. “I know!”

  In the weeks that followed, Smith comforted himself with the knowledge that at least Taka-way-wemps had provided him with some warning of the crisis to come. Not that the warning was much use. Even had he been able to rouse the majority of Jamestown into action, the English could not lift the fort by its roots and transport it to a more favorable location.

  It was clear now why the Paspaheghs, the clan who claimed ownership of the spit where Jamestown stood, had never built upon this land. Aside from the marshy ground and the plagues of gnats in the summer, there was no convenient freshwater source. The river had grown so sluggish and salty that it was nearly undrinkable. A few of Smith’s industrious band scouted out a trickling spring that could be reached by trudging through the bogs and wading across a brackish stream that cut across the spit, but it was a long, difficult journey through sucking mud and stinging flies. The few skins of freshwater that could be hauled to the fort each day were almost not worth the effort, yet it was better than drinking the James River’s foul brine.

  Smith shuddered to think what would have become of the settlement if he had not brokered a peace with Powhatan. He was sharply aware that no man made it through the marshes and across the creek to the meager spring except by the Indians’ permission. It was not so long ago that they had watched through the chinks of their palisade as their pigs were shot for sport.

  Under the onslaught of hot sun and winged pestilence, laboring just to secure a few mouthfuls of potable water each day, the English fell ill one by one. Those who were not seized by the flux contended with bouts of wretched vomiting, and even those who did not gag and gasp on hands and knees were nearly too weak to walk. Day by day, hope for the first supply ship waned. Smith’s cache of traded Indian foods was the only surety against malnutrition. But it was a small store and would soon be gone, as would the closest Indians, who in the autumn would pack up hearth and home to pursue the deer and migratory birds deep into the western woodlands.

  Soon even Smith succumbed to the sickness. His bowels and his joints turned to water, so that each step was a wavering agony. Each hand sign he made during trading sessions trembled; the effort of remaining upright and stoic was nearly too much for him. When he realized he could no longer keep his weakness concealed from the naturals, he closed the fort to all trade. It was a bitter decision to forgo the final stores of food, the last the Indians were willing to part with before their season of taquitock set in. God alone knew when they would return, or whether they would bring meat from their hunts to trade for copper and beads.

  Smith prayed that they would. He could do little else but pray.

  OPECHANCANOUGH

  Season of Nepinough

  The Pamunkey canoes were so heavily laden that the river nearly spilled over their sides. Opechancanough scowled at the brace of turkeys and the many baskets of corn packed into his vessel. They were not from Pamunkey-town; Opechancanough would not ask Pamunkey women to deplete their precious caches. Not during yet another drought year—not for the sake of the tassantassas. And yet by the order of Powhatan, it was Opechancanough who conveyed the mamanatowick’s gift to the fort.

  The tribes nearest to the white men’s strange, squalid, log-built town reported favorable trades and largely pleasant interactions with the tassantassas—pleasant enough, if one overlooked their naturally brusque and rude dispositions. But Opechancanough recalled Wowinchopunck’s relation of his early interactions with the fort. They might mask their true intentions with friendly trade, but first impressions said much of a man’s real spirit. These tassantassas were touchy, stingy with their best trade goods, and quick to turn aggressive. Their lack of manners said much about their intentions. They certainly could not be trusted.

  And quite apart from their poor behavior, they possessed the great, terrible gun, the one Wowinchopunck had heard cracking like a thunderstorm. Only the Okeus knew what such a weapon was capable of, the scale of death and destruction it might inflict. Powhatan might harbor hopes of turning that weapon against the western tribes, but Opechancanough was no fool. The great gun would be trained on the Real People if it would be aimed at anyone. No matter how many exotic beads they dangled before his eyes, Opechancanough would not be lulled into trusting the tassantassas.

  The Pamunkey delegation beached their canoes carefully. At Opechancanough’s order, the warriors remained in their boats, paddles at the ready, prepared to make a hasty retreat if he gave the word. Opechancanough set out alone across the muddy shore.

  The fort had grown since the last time he’d seen it. The high wall was the same, its logs hacked into sharp points, biting into the sky like a wolf’s ravening fangs. Where the corners of the walls met, mounds of earth lifted drum-shaped towers high; the drum towers extended forked projections like the tail fin of a fish, platforms from which a pair of armed men could see clearly in any direction. An elegant design, Opechancanough was forced to admit. The entire town can be defended from those towers by only a handful of men. They may be unconscionably disrespectful and unable to recognize Real People when they met them, but the tassantassas clearly possessed some measure of intelligence. It would be a challenge to break them.

  “Ho!” a voice called from one of the drum towers.

  Opechancanough halted in the bare ground outside the fort and waited. He noted with wry amusement that the tassantassas had finally cut the grass down to ankle height.

  After a moment, a familiar face peered over the edge of the nearest tower’s fin. His thick yellow beard was as tangled and unkempt as moss, the skin around his eyes and along the bridge of his nose stained bright pink. He’d heard from Paspahegh traders that this was a curious feature the tassantassas displayed after too much exposure to the sun.

  Opechancanough raised a hand. “Chawnzmit.”

  The man returned the greeting, his pale palm rising over the edge of the wall.

  Opechancanough made the hand signs to indicate he wished to make a trade. Chawnzmit turned to confer with a few of his companions. Opechancanough held his breath; word had circulated through the towns of the Real People that the tassantassas had refused trade for weeks. Just when he thought they would turn him away, Chawnzmit shouted something in his odd, singsong tongue. There was a thump and a scrape, and the log gateway swung open with a piercing, high-pitched whine.

  At Opechancanough’s word, the gifts from Powhatan were carried into the white men’s town. There was no mistaking the wide-eyed desperation with which the tassantassas stared at the offerings: several turkeys strung up by their feet; twenty squirrels bundled by their tails, fat enough for a rich stew; a dozen baskets of well-dried corn that would keep in a dry cache for months to come; woven grass bags full of smoke-preserved fillets from the river’s huge, long-nosed sturgeon.

  There was no mystery to the men’s thin, shaky condition, to the dark-violet rings beneath their eyes. In the middle of their town, Opechancanough displayed the wealth of Powhatan. He looked at the ring of tassantassas, observing their frail weakness with satisfaction. As more white men gathered to stare at the food, he felt the calm assurance of one who has the undisputed upper hand. Opechancanough smiled.

  Chawnzmit approached, a man as squat and ill-proportioned as a child just learning to take its first steps. He tottered like a child, too, weak and wan, still feeling the effects of the illness that had swept through the town. Chawnzmit issued a command to his men, a harsh, raspy bark, and they dispersed with reluctant, sullen faces, leaving their leader to bargain with Opechancanough alone.

  Wise. Hungry men
in a desperate crowd were apt to trade poorly. Chawnzmit clearly wished to retain control of the situation, to broker the most favorable terms he could. He will find me just as canny a trader, though. And anyhow, I’ve already received what I desired most: knowledge of your men’s condition, Chawnzmit. That is more valuable by far than your copper and your pretty beads.

  “I know you,” said Chawnzmit, “but I do not know your name.”

  Opechancanough’s smile faded in the wake of his shock. He had thought to deal in hand signs; he had not thought to encounter his own language in the mouth of a tassantassa. The accent was thick and rough, but the meaning was clear.

  Chawnzmit sank onto his haunches across from Opechancanough, the posture of open trade. “You came here before, with Powhatan and Naukaquawis.”

  “Yes,” Opechancanough admitted.

  “You are Powhatan’s . . . brother?”

  Opechancanough nodded.

  “Do I surprise you?” Chawnzmit gestured toward his own mouth.

  “You have learned well.”

  “I am a swift learner.”

  Opechancanough studied the man. His squat body and bushy hair, yellow as a deer’s hide, gave him a bestial appearance; the blue eyes were disconcerting in their paleness. A strong, sour smell rose from him, the same pungent reek that trailed all the tassantassas. Opechancanough had heard of it from the Paspaheghs, but had not experienced it himself until now. The smell pinched at his nostrils, which twitched as if to close themselves off against the assault. How can a creature be so like an animal, and yet learn so quickly? And if the tassantassas were capable of learning the Real People’s tongue, why could they not learn simple respect?

  Still, the man had learned, had made an effort to build a bridge between the Real People and his own kind. Opechancanough felt the stirrings of a slow, grudging respect.

  “What is your name?” Chawnzmit asked.

  “Opechancanough. Werowance of Pamunkey.”