Tidewater: A Novel of Pocahontas and the Jamestown Colony

by Libbie Hawker

  He worked steadily at his task, patiently approaching Chawnzmit from novel angles as the days sped by and winter closed an ever-tightening fist around the land. Whatever information he might coax out of the tassantassa was valuable beyond price, for Opechancanough’s declaration that he did not believe the man to be a chief was no bluff. In spite of his bold confidence, there also ran in Chawnzmit a truer current of defensiveness. He may have been born to rule—his sharp mind was certainly as capable as any chief’s—but no werowance ever felt such an obvious need to prove his own worth to others. Opechancanough had no doubt that among his kind, Chawnzmit was as common as a flea, and the fact of it gnawed at his spirit day and night. If he was no chief, if the white men did not follow his commands, then Chawnzmit served no purpose as a captive. Once Opechancanough had gleaned whatever knowledge he could from Chawnzmit’s clever half answers and vague equivocations, he could safely be put to death without fear of reprisal. Of course, once Chawnzmit was disposed of, the Real People would lose this opportunity to learn about the white invaders.

  Three days after he left, the messenger returned, wide-eyed and bedraggled from the harrowing experience. Opechancanough left a guard with Chawnzmit and ran through the hunting camp, its colors subdued by a thick blanket of frost, to the riverbank. A few young men helped the messenger tow his canoe out of the icy water. One handed the youth a corn cake, which he tore into hungrily, nodding his thanks. When he saw Opechancanough, the messenger swallowed hard and clapped his hand to his breast in salute.

  “What news?” Opechancanough said. It was a struggle to keep his voice casual. The young man’s expression was serious, nearly dire, and Opechancanough wanted to seize him by the shoulders and shake him until the story fell out of his mouth.

  “I gave the message to the first white man I saw,” the youth said, “without speaking a word, as you instructed. The white men gathered and looked at it for a long time, then they shouted among themselves. Finally one gave the gift you demanded, and then”—he dropped his eyes, ashamed of the fright that still harried him—“and then they fired a huge gun at me. The sound was so loud it felt like it split my bones. I saw a tree covered in ice burst as the great gun fired. It just shattered, like it was nothing more than an old pot thrown against a boulder.”

  Opechancanough stared downriver. So the tassantassas’ great gun could shatter a tree. How many of the Real People would fall before a single blast of that terrible weapon?

  “How many boats do you have?” Opechancanough murmured, unaware that he spoke aloud. He watched a bank of mist move like a sorrowful ghost across a distant bend in the river.

  Inside his head, he heard Chawnzmit’s haughty reply. An uncountable number.

  “I am sorry, werowance,” the young messenger said. “I didn’t hear you.”

  Opechancanough shook his head.

  “The white men sent this gift for you, werowance.” He reached behind himself and drew an object from the belt that held his wrapping cloth.

  It was the axe Opechancanough had requested. He took it in his hand, testing the weight of it. Good for throwing. The blade was crafted of that strange blue metal, pale as winter, pale as Chawnzmit’s skin. Its sheen revealed a vague reflection of Opechancanough’s face, a distorted blur from which he could discern no features. They obeyed your command, he conceded silently to Chawnzmit. And although the white man could not hear the words, still Opechancanough felt Chawnzmit laughing.

  Opechancanough dismissed the guard and slunk inside his house. Chawnzmit was bending over the fire, adding a bit of wood. He straightened at Opechancanough’s arrival and looked at him solemnly. For once, all the accustomed bravado was stripped from his face.

  Opechancanough held up the axe in the space between them. Though he felt the weight of it in his hand, the thing seemed to float of its own accord, orienting itself between the werowance and his captive with the same strange, unbreakable persistence of the arrow in Chawnzmit’s disc.

  “Gather your carrying pouch,” Opechancanough said. “I will find a cloak for you.”

  “Where are you taking me?” This time Chawnzmit’s voice betrayed no fear. Opechancanough studied his face for a long moment, but he could read nothing of the tassantassa’s emotions.

  Opechancanough ducked back through his door without replying, leaving Chawnzmit alone with his inscrutable thoughts.

  So began the captive’s tour of the tribes of the Real People.

  They marched on foot from one town to the next, the entire hunting camp following Opechancanough in a parade of boastful triumph. The women carried the bark strips of their houses and the many baskets of dried deer meat; the men toted hides and tools, and all of them set up a cry as they approached each successive settlement.

  Come and see! Come and see what the chief of Pamunkey has taken!

  Chawnzmit bore it stoically, moving with his head held high, his keen eyes watching straight ahead while women and children, warriors and old men, clustered around him in groups, singing chants about his capture, dancing in honor of the Pamunkeys’ bravery.

  The white man’s unflappable calm only heightened Opechancanough’s private distress. Although the fort of the tassantassas had certainly responded to Chawnzmit’s command—responded out of all proportion with their display of tree-shattering might—Opechancanough still could not reconcile himself to the fact that this man might be a chief. He was not wrong about Chawnzmit; he was certain of that. The appearance of the axe had bolstered Chawnzmit’s confidence, but Opechancanough still sensed that quiet pulse of defensive ire in the white man. Worse, he felt in his own spirit the same deficiency. It grew steadily from the place where Tsena-no-ha’s wound still festered, spreading over him like a suffocating mantle. He glanced at his Pamunkey warriors as they led Chawnzmit through town after town, wondering how long it would be until his men finally saw the self-doubt occluding his chiefly bearing.

  They came at last to Pamunkey-town, and those few people who had not joined the hunting camp set up wild cries of welcome. Normally the homecoming after a successful hunt filled Opechancanough with pleasant warmth. Now the sight of his own people made him wary. They knew him better here than in any of the towns they’d passed through. How long until they see me for what I am? He felt Pamunkey eyes upon him and heard their approving shouts, but Opechancanough’s spirit quailed. I am a fallen man, despised by his wife, wrong in judgment, stripped of confidence. He drew himself up to his full height, pushed out his chest, and swaggered beside his captive like a cocky boy strutting in a contest of boasts. If this Chawnzmit can conceal his true nature, so can I.

  It did not take long for the women to restore the bark strips to Opechancanough’s house. He ushered Chawnzmit inside and snapped a few orders to the town’s women. Soon a blaze roared in the fire pit, banishing winter’s chill from the newly covered dwelling. A woman laid freshly cleaned mats on Opechancanough’s bed, peering shyly at the tassantassa. Opechancanough sent her scuttling away with orders for a lavish supper.

  When it arrived—two kinds of stew, baskets of cakes and dumplings, a platter with an array of dried fish, and a whole shoulder of fresh roasted deer meat—Chawnzmit’s face fell into sorrow for the first time since Opechancanough had marched him from the hunting camp.

  “What is it, Tassantassa?” Opechancanough narrowed his eyes at Chawnzmit and drew a twig of seasoning stick from one of the breadbaskets. He held the end of the twig in the fire. When it was well charred, he pinched it between thumb and finger, crumbling the salty ash over a hunk of deer meat.

  “You have fed me very well at each town,” Chawnzmit said quietly.

  Opechancanough bit into the deer. It was perfectly roasted, seared on the outside, still juicy and rich inside. The fresh meat would last only a week or two, and then it would be nothing but dried venison and leathery fish and cached corn and beans until cattapeuk came again with its abundance of lively fish ru
ns, filling bellies with fresh food and spirits with cheer.

  “Don’t waste this meat,” Opechancanough advised. “Eat all you can.”

  Chawnzmit looked up at him with a stare that was suddenly hard and fierce, quite unlike the cool self-possession he had shown through the many days of his captivity. “You are fattening me up, aren’t you?”

  Opechancanough snorted around his mouthful of meat. “Fattening you up? For what purpose?” Did the man think Opechancanough would make him as plump as a woman, and then slide into his blankets for a tumble?

  “To eat me,” Chawnzmit spat. His eyes burned with hatred and a desperate fear that took Opechancanough aback.

  Opechancanough’s brows rose before he could still his own face. The Real People seemed convinced that Chawnzmit was a werowance, even if Opechancanough still harbored doubts. A captive chief could not be starved like a disobedient dog. The lavish feasting was a customary mark of respect, though Chawnzmit’s certainty that it was intended to fatten him up like a ripe ear of corn could only mean that the tassantassas engaged in the grisly practice themselves.

  Opechancanough swallowed his venison in a painful lump. He schooled his face carefully. Then he met Chawnzmit’s frightened eyes with a slow, deliberate smile.

  Chawnzmit turned his face away from the food with a gasp that was nearly a sob.

  Perhaps this man could be worn down after all, and made to cooperate. Made to give up his secrets.

  Opechancanough dipped his oyster-shell bowl into one of the stewpots, watching Chawnzmit with a steady glare. Before he could bring the shell to his mouth, though, a voice called through the door flap.

  “Werowance!” It was one of the town’s women. There was a distinct note of urgency in her cry.

  Opechancanough slipped outside.

  The woman gestured toward the town’s central fire pit, the location of all ceremonies and public meetings. “There is a message from Powhatan, werowance. A message . . . and a priest.”

  Opechancanough cursed under his breath. Two of his best warriors loitered nearby, exchanging tales from the hunt. Their faces were relaxed, flush with the pleasure of being home at last, after a long and arduous taquitock. He envied them their ease. A few young women watched them from the yard of a nearby home, giggling and whispering behind the folds of their winter cloaks. Opechancanough pulled the men aside, gave them their instructions, and left them guarding his door while Chawnzmit remained within, chewing on nothing but his own fear.

  He ground his teeth when he saw who was waiting at the communal fire. Utta-ma-tomakkin was young for a priest of his esteem, smooth-faced and slender-limbed. He had surely seen no more than twenty-two or -three winters, if that. But for his recent youth, he carried himself with the gravity, the slow-moving, ponderous dignity, of one well aged in the temples. A long cloak of bearskin hung from his shoulders, fur side in, the deep black shag resting against unscarred copper skin. The flesh side of the pelt was adorned with the symbols of ceremony. Dark roanoke beads were stitched into the shapes of a rearing cougar and deer, facing each other, locked in their opposing postures of violence and flight, dancing on the edge of that strange, dark realm only the priests could occupy, the place between knowing and feeling, dreaming and waking, living and dying. Below the cougar and deer, scores of white shell discs clattered as the priest shifted his weight at Opechancanough’s approach. Utta-ma-tomakkin’s deep-set eyes, black as a wood buffalo’s horn, stared out from behind the fringe that dropped from the front of his headdress, a heavy, swaying curtain of white weasel tails and iridescent strips of discarded snakeskins.

  The boy-priest, the prodigy of Uttamussak in the flesh, Opechancanough thought viciously, sensing that his prize was about to be snatched away by the Okeus’s cruel caprice. As he gazed into the solemn eyes of the young priest, his inner bravado melted like a shard of ice dropped into a heart fire. It was whispered that this Utta-ma-tomakkin was touched by the gods themselves, that when the Okeus’s hand fell upon him he shook and frothed at the mouth and made sounds like a beast in the forest. It was said that the things he saw during these sacred fits were truer than the things normal men saw—truer than the things other priests saw. Young as he was, Utta-ma-tomakkin was a force in the world, and he knew it, silent and satisfied with his own great import.

  Even if he still looked like a boy ready for the huskanaw.

  By sending the most revered priest from the greatest temple in Tsenacomoco, Powhatan had certainly communicated the gravity of his message. Opechancanough must tread with care if he wished to retain his grip on Chawnzmit.

  He greeted the priest with humble formality.

  “Powhatan sends me,” said Utta-ma-tomakkin, “to conjure the white man.”

  Opechancanough said nothing, hoping his face imparted none of the helpless rage he felt.

  If the priest detected his anger, he did not deign to show it. “I will require seven priests from your own temple, tobacco, and corn.”

  Opechancanough nodded brusquely.

  “Once the spirits have spoken,” the young priest said, a touch of severity in his tone, “I am to decide what to do with the man.”

  Opechancanough steadied himself with a long, slow breath. “This is my territory, my town. He is my captive.”

  “I move on the orders of the mamanatowick.”

  “Even my brother may not tell a werowance how to run his own affairs.”

  Utta-ma-tomakkin shrugged, an infuriating gesture from one so young. “And yet werowances rise and fall at your brother’s word. You would be wise to cooperate, Opechancanough.” The priest suddenly smiled, his flashing teeth as white as his weasel-tail fringe. “Cheer up. The Okeus might declare him a dead man. In that case, I shall give you the honor of carrying out the death rites yourself.”

  In the end, it was Opechancanough who presented Chawnzmit to the temple, leading him past the spirit posts with their terrible carved heads, the leering wolf, the ravening cougar, the brutal, howling man. He stood side by side with his captive on the threshold of darkness, facing the void where the great cat and the fleet, delicate deer remained eternally poised, suspended in the moment before claws raked flesh, before hooves sprang from the earth, the moment of one held breath stretching on forever. Opechancanough felt a certain loosening within, the opening up he always felt whenever he stepped into the presence of the god. In the doorway of the temple, his spirit bowed to the inevitable. Chawnzmit similarly shifted, his body seeming both lighter and heavier in the space of the same heartbeat, as if he, too, caved to his fate. The tassantassa released the weight of his fear, replacing it with the bold curiosity that was his native state of being. But he also took up the burden of acceptance, surrendering himself to whatever lay within the temple walls.

  As they stepped through the doorway, Opechancanough felt a fleeting sense of brotherhood with Chawnzmit, though he knew that brotherhood with this man could never be. The certainty of that knowledge nearly brought sorrow to his spirit.

  It was not long before their eyes adjusted to the temple’s dimness. Chawnzmit blinked his watery blue eyes as he stared about. Opechancanough watched silently as the tassantassa goggled at the shaggy shadows of draped wolf pelts, the racks of baskets full of tribute to the god and his attendant spirits. The baskets squatted row upon row along the walls like malign dwarf demons waiting for the unwary to draw too near. Deep in the heart of the temple, the pop of a heart fire kindling to life rose up with the rhythmic chant of men’s voices. Chawnzmit stepped toward the sound. The claws of fate were well hooked into his hide, and they drew him on with a steady, undeniable hand.

  They reached the central fire pit. The seven priests, each with a headdress of a different creature’s hide, sang low as they went about their tasks. The stooped as they moved around the fire, delineating five concentric circles, one for each season: corn seed, finely ground nut husks, black soil, pale dry ash. The fi
fth circle, smallest and nearest to the flames, was a ring of dried tobacco leaf. One by one the priests straightened their backs. Below their concealing headdresses, the fire now and again illuminated the sloping plane of a cheekbone or a chin, and the bright colors of ceremonial paint flickered against the darkness.

  Opechancanough whispered his instructions to Chawnzmit. The man did not hesitate, but walked through the five rings, his small feet tracking a little of each substance as he went. He stepped within the circle of tobacco and turned to face Utta-ma-tomakkin, placid as a deer at midday.

  The young priest gave a wild howl. He raised a turtle-shell rattle above his head, crying to the four directions, shouting to the four winds. He shook the corn seeds within the shells until they thundered like a spring deluge. The seven priests began to whirl, stamping and beating at their own skin with hands and twig switches until their skin ran with sweat.

  “Okeus,” Utta-ma-tomakkin cried, “judge this man. Oh, great god, most powerful spirit, you of the holy hair and the righteous way, shining man of the bow! I call upon you, Okeus. I beseech with corn, I beseech with smoke, I beseech with tobacco! Show me, instruct me in your will. Put the fate of this man into my hands!”

  They danced, they shouted, they beat upon themselves until even Opechancanough lost himself in the wild power and the heat. Sweat stung his eyes and slid down his back. He swayed, and the chattering voice of the rattle ran like lightning along his blood, flashing and hot, inciting his spirit like war, like a woman’s touch. He did not know how long they danced, how many times the young priest called upon the god. It may have been a dozen times or a hundred. But at last Utta-ma-tomakkin gave a piercing scream, and the priests staggered to a halt.

  The only sounds were the heart fire, and the ragged rasp of Chawnzmit’s breath.

  Opechancanough’s hands worked into fists behind his back. Slowly he raised his eyes from Chawnzmit’s thick-bearded face to the still specter of Utta-ma-tomakkin, tense as a sky laden with thunder.