Tidewater: A Novel of Pocahontas and the Jamestown Colony

by Libbie Hawker

  The yellow-bearded man placed a hand to his heart. “I am honored to trade with you, chief.”

  They set about their business. Opechancanough made it clear that the goods came courtesy of Powhatan, and that items offered in return should be suitable to his lofty station. He had seen the hunger and eagerness in the other tassantassas’ eyes, yet Chawnzmit bargained coolly, considering and rejecting suggested terms with an offhanded casualness that astonished Opechancanough. Surely Chawnzmit was intelligent enough to know how dire his situation was. He and his men were depleted by illness, deprived of fresh water, and obviously on the verge of starvation. Yet in the end, Opechancanough was not able to secure the guns he longed for. He loaded his canoes with an assortment of tools, a few hatchets, and a fair sum of copper to bring to Powhatan. In truth, it was a treasure that should please any man, even the wealthy mamanatowick. And yet Opechancanough could not rid himself of a creeping suspicion that he had come out the poorer in the deal.

  Opechancanough arrived at Werowocomoco as the sun was setting. His men unloaded the trade goods while a crowd of women and children gathered, eyeing the chains of copper and exclaiming over the tools. He made his way through the press and found the footpath that led through the dense thicket windbreak and into the town of Werowocomoco. The few women who were not gathered on the strand to examine the tassantassas’ wares were busy in their little yards making early preparations for the trek to come, shaking out grass mats and rolling them tightly, and nestling pots within pots within carrying baskets. The days were still hot—hotter than anyone liked in this maddeningly dry year—but the slow turn of seasons was still evident in the tinge of gold in the treetops and the dry curling at the edges of corn husks, the last ears’ tassels hanging limp and brown in the heat. The harsh rhythm of the digging song rose from an unseen garden in the distance. The sound of women’s voices was sweet. A pang of homesickness gripped Opechancanough, a deep, raw longing for the way things had been, for the days when Tsena-no-ha still smiled to see him.

  Powhatan waited, as ever, in the depths of his great house. A certain sallowness hung about his well-worn features. In a painful rush of bright, sharp memory Opechancanough saw his brother as a youth, leading him on a race through the trees, a bag slung over one shoulder. Come back, Opechancanough had shouted. Mother will beat you for stealing the sweet cakes! But his eldest brother was as strong and fleet as a buck. He recalled the soles of Wahunse-na-cawh’s feet flashing as he ran, the bag bouncing on his broad back with its tracery of new tattoos, the dappled light and shade of the forest flickering over his skin and the solid muscles of his legs.

  No, Opechancanough mused, not Wahunse-na-cawh. Those were the days long before his brother was called Powhatan, even before he had taken the name Wahunse-na-cawh to celebrate his accession to chief. The days before he himself was called Opechancanough. For one moment of panic and bitter self-loathing, Opechancanough could not recall their oldest names, their childhood names. This is what it means to grow old. You forget who you were. You forget who you are. You stay hidden away in a dark lodge while outside the seasons change and the women sing and the world goes on eternally while you forget everything.

  Then the names came back to him in a flood of relief. He had caught up to his brother at last, tackled him; they had rolled over and over, crushing the bag of stolen cakes, and laughing, gasping, shared the sweet crumbs between them.

  Opechancanough blinked; the smoke inside the great house stung his eyes.

  “Brother,” said Powhatan. “How did they take my gifts?”

  “I suspect I could have worked a gun or two out of them if I’d had more time. Still, I think you will be pleased with the goods we secured.”

  Powhatan nodded silently.

  “I noted, mamanatowick, that they were weak.”

  “Weak?”

  “They seemed to be suffering from an illness.”

  “Probably due to bad water. There are no good springs on the land where they settled.”

  “Possibly.”

  Opechancanough lapsed into a tentative, thoughtful silence. Powhatan watched him expectantly, waiting for the words they both knew would come.

  “Now is the time,” Opechancanough ventured at last, “to finish them, while they are sick and weak.”

  “Finish them?”

  “I keep thinking, Brother, about their guns—about the great gun Wowinchopunck heard.”

  “You fear it?”

  He bristled. “You know I fear nothing.”

  Powhatan raised a placating hand. “You are no coward. I know that well. But this gun concerns you.”

  “Of course it does.”

  “I would use it—”

  “Against your enemies,” Opechancanough said impatiently. “I know.”

  Powhatan fell icily silent.

  Opechancanough’s face flushed, and he cursed himself for his cringing shame. “I apologize, Brother. I know better than to interrupt you.”

  “The tassantassas are here now. We may as well make use of them.”

  “Why are they here? Have you not asked yourself?”

  “Of course I have.”

  “This isn’t like the times before, when the tassantassas came on their boats, took a few children, and left again. They have built a town—a strange town, I grant you, and one without women to tend gardens or raise children. But it is a town. There is no doubt of it.”

  “What do you think they mean by it? You saw them today. What is your impression?”

  Opechancanough drew a deep breath. He hadn’t actually put any thought into what the tassantassas might intend, why they haunted Paspahegh territory like pale, malevolent ghosts. But the moment Powhatan asked the question, Opechancanough knew the answer.

  “They want our land. All of it, not just that miserable boggy spit. Their town will grow. Its walls will spread. They will take every territory for their own. They want the whole of Tsenacomoco.”

  Powhatan scoffed. “Be reasonable. There are hundreds of us—thousands. Not even a hundred of the tassantassas are left alive. I have heard of the ones who were killed and our scouts have seen them bury more dead in recent days. It must be the sickness that did them in. How can so few men defeat the Real People? Talk sense, Brother.”

  Opechancanough shrugged helplessly, and hated himself for the weakness of the gesture. “I know I speak the truth. Maybe the Okeus puts these words into my mouth.”

  “So you are a priest now?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Again, I say, be sensible. Think of all we can gain from them, if only we can make them our allies. We are halfway there. They trade with us eagerly. You said they have no gardens. Therefore they have no sufficient stores to see them through the winter. They will be reliant on us. They will come to know how I control this land, the people, even the food they eat.”

  Opechancanough’s jaw tightened. He fought back harsh words, shielding his eyes to his brother’s advancing age and the weakness that encroached like a killing frost. He schooled his voice to a calm, reasonable tone. “They will do us no good in the end. In a dry year like this one—five dry years in a row, Wahunse-na-cawh, my wise brother—how can we take food from our women and children to keep these beasts alive? They are not Real People. You must see that.”

  “What would you have me do, then? Allow them to starve when taquitock sets in?”

  “Let me take three bands: Paspahegh, Quiyo-co-hannock, and my Pamunkey. Let me put an end to them. It will be quick. Efficient. Thorough.”

  Amusement lit Powhatan’s hooded eyes. “Quiyo-co-hannock, eh? You would fight beside Pepiscunimah?”

  “I will do what I must do. Quiyo-co-hannock is near to the white men’s fort. Together we could make short work of it. It would be clean, and over with swiftly.”

  Powhatan gazed off into the shadowed depths of his great house, we
ighing the proposal, tasting it. Opechancanough allowed himself to feel a swell of hope, a thrill rising high and hot along his spine. But in the next moment Powhatan spat it out, and his words were bitter.

  “No, Brother. I will not allow this. You will continue to support the tassantassas’ fort. You will bring them more gifts when I direct you.”

  His fists clenched hard at his sides. “I will not. You are the mamanatowick, but I am a chief in my own right, and in this I cannot obey.”

  “You will,” Powhatan said quietly. “Because you are my brother.”

  “I will not, because I am a chief of the Real People.”

  Their eyes met and held over the heart fire, locked like the antlers of two great bucks in dire contest.

  “This anger, Opechancanough, the way you lash out. It is not becoming of a man.”

  “Your indecision is not becoming of a man. You are weak and wavering, like a woman fretting over village gossip.”

  Powhatan’s eyes narrowed. Opechancanough saw the threat in his brother’s dangerously still face. I can take away your power, the old man’s eyes said. I can make you tanx, or less. He braced himself when Powhatan’s mouth opened, prepared for the axe blow that would un-man him. But Powhatan said only, “I wonder who is the weaker of us, after all.”

  Opechancanough clapped his hand to his chest in a terse salute and spun on his heel. He was at the door flap before he knew it, with no sense of traveling the dark length of the great house, no memory of his own footsteps. One moment he was in Powhatan’s yehakin, and the next he was outside, beyond, breathing air that was warm with the promise of change, bitter with the promise of frost.

  He would find another way to bring the tassantassas under control, or crush them altogether. He swore it silently, made an oath to the season with every beat of his heart. He swore it to the women who still chanted innocently over their work, their voices rising in concert as the last rays of the sun bled crimson from the sky.

  It would come to pass. He was a werowance of the Real People; he would make good on his vow.

  SMITH

  August 1607

  John Smith watched in wary anticipation as the final spadeful of earth fell onto Bartholomew Gosnold’s grave with a hiss and a wet smack. The men who were strong enough to stand bowed their heads for prayer. The rest huddled on the ground, dull and listless, while Edward-Maria Wingfield stood over the grave with Bible in hand.

  Wingfield met Smith’s eye. The president’s stare was hard and cold as winter ice.

  Fourteen men dead since the flux swept through our ranks. Smith glared his accusation at Wingfield. All of us fell ill—all but you.

  Wingfield looked resolutely away, breaking the grip of Smith’s stare with a ponderous dignity that seemed almost resigned.

  He knows what is coming. He knows there is no stopping it. No way to stop it, no way to repent—not with Gosnold, Wingfield’s most powerful friend, sleeping under a blanket of salt-black mud.

  As credit to his bravery, Wingfield remained focused on the work at hand. He gave a respectful elegy in a voice that never wavered, expounding on the mystery of God’s workings, declaring what an inspiration Gosnold was, that he should not only found the Virginia Company but be willing to die in its service, far from home on a savage shore. When he finished the closing prayer in his ringing orator’s baritone, when the gathered men had delivered a ragged “Amen,” Wingfield gave one small, keen-eyed nod to Smith and turned on his heel. He strode toward the open palisade gate, the Holy Book swinging like a pendulum at his side, arms stiff, legs stiff, neck stiff, but never deigning to glance right or left.

  “Come on, then,” Smith muttered. The men helped one another to their feet and followed, wobbly, leaning on shoulders and backs that were no more stable than their own.

  When they reached the cabins, Wingfield paused outside his private quarters. He said nothing, only stood aside and watched Smith enter. The room was fastidiously neat. The men drew up in a half circle around the cabin door while Smith went about his business, shaking out the blankets, flipping the cot, upending the wooden crate that served as a foot trunk . . . and there. A package of oilcloth tied with a worn length of leather thong tumbled onto the packed-earth floor.

  Smith looked up at Wingfield. The man’s eyes were very nearly sorrowful.

  Smith opened the bundle with trembling hands. He folded back the cloth from the evidence that would damn Wingfield to the brig, the evidence he knew he would find: dried fruit, dried meat, and a small brown bottle of nourishing olive oil. There must have been two pounds of the stuff remaining. The cache Wingfield had kept since their landing had surely been rich and plentiful.

  A roar of indignation went up from the gathered men.

  “You see,” Smith shouted. “Now you know why he never fell ill like the rest of us. He has been keeping a private store to fortify himself. He has hoarded wellness for his own while we suffered and died. I would have discovered it sooner, but I was too weak from the flux myself.”

  Wingfield stepped backward. It was not a retreat; he did not recoil from Smith’s words or from his bold eyes. It was a quiet surrender. He gave himself gently but firmly into the hands of the men.

  “Put him in the brig!” somebody shouted.

  “Aye, the brig, where he kept John Smith!”

  Smith moved toward Wingfield, toward the shouting men who surrounded him. This time the tremor in his knees was the blood rush of victory, not the residual quaking of his illness.

  Wingfield’s shoulders jerked; he might have swept an ironic bow, had so many hands not held him upright. “I leave you to it, Smith—you and whatever council you can raise from this depraved lot. You ease me of a great deal of trouble. I am at your pleasure; dispose of me as you will without further theatrics.”

  Smith hefted the bundle in his hands as if testing the weight of Wingfield’s sins. “Send him to the brig,” he said at last.

  The men cheered.

  The woodland canopy had turned to shades of fire. Gold and orange, russet and blood red moved in a small but ceaseless wind, speaking in a constant whisper across the grassy brake of the spit. Smith paced the watchtower. His eyes never left the deep-blue shadows beneath the canopy, the veiled shade of the forest floor. He hoped to see Indians moving there, bearing baskets full of corn and sacks of dried fish as they once had. It had been more than a week since their last trading visitors, and already Smith feared that Jamestown’s stores would soon be empty.

  He shifted his gaze to the Discovery. It stood still and dignified, unmoved by the river’s current, as stoic as the prisoner who dwelt in its cramped brig. The knowledge of Wingfield’s defeat brought Smith less satisfaction by the day. The council had voted a new president into office immediately upon securing Wingfield aboard the Discovery. Smith had not dared to hope the vote would fall in his favor, and indeed it had not. John Ratcliffe was the new president of the council, a bright man, but one of intense and varied moods with a history he was strangely reluctant to discuss. He was, of course, a gentleman, and he had no disinclination to trumpet his fine pedigree.

  Smith heard the scrape of boots on the ladder. He turned in time to see Ratcliffe rise up onto the watchtower. The steel of his breastplate and helmet shone in the clear, warm air of early autumn.

  “Good day, Smith.”

  Smith nodded.

  “I hope you don’t mind my coming to speak with you. I have been meaning to ever since the vote.” Ratcliffe’s eyes had a mild squint even in dim light, and now, with the sun bright on the nearby river, they were two thin black creases in the man’s face, eerily unreadable. “I understand you donated Wingfield’s . . . the supply of food to the fort’s storehouse.”

  That particular vote had gone in Smith’s favor. The fact that he was unanimously awarded the secret store of fruit and meat was a small sop to his lack of presidency. “The men woul
d have torn me apart if I’d kept it for myself,” he said. But he would have donated it to the storehouse even had the men not been wild with hunger and power.

  Ratcliffe squinted for a long moment, first at Smith, then out at the Discovery, which was ringed by a dazzling halo of sun on water. “You don’t like me, Smith. I can see that.”

  “You don’t like me, either.”

  Ratcliffe did not deny it. “But I do respect you. I know of your skills, not only among our own but with the naturals. I have noted the work you do with them, learning their tongue and their customs.”

  Smith felt his spine straighten, his chin raise. Like a damned dog perking up when its master calls. “I have been gaining whatever I can from them—not only food for our storehouse, but knowledge, too.”

  “I see that as well.”

  “We need to know whatever they can teach us.” Smith waved toward the fiery treetops, the endless rustling. The gentle breeze tugged a few leaves free, and they skittered, bright and airy as feathers, out into the marsh. “Winter is not far off. It will go hard on us if we don’t know what to expect.”

  Ratcliffe nodded slowly. “I believe you are right. That’s why I’ve come to you today, Smith. I’ve a task for you.”

  Smith eyed the president warily, measuring him, searching for mockery or lie. But Ratcliffe was inscrutable. At last Smith said, “Well?”

  “I would set you in charge of our relations with the naturals.”

  Smith exhaled roughly. “I nigh am already.”

  “Good. Then it won’t be any trouble for you. Listen, Smith. Skilled as you are with the locals, I must ask you: Do you know why they’ve stopped coming to trade with us?”

  They both looked down from the watchtower to the dark roof of the storehouse. The casks of meal were infested and near empty; the Indian corn had long since been eaten.

  “It is their hunting season,” Smith said. “They’ve gone west, upriver, following the deer.”

  “And when will they return?”