Pocahontas glanced around. At the far end of the temple, light dropped in a bright-white shaft through the smoke hole in the roof. The heart fire burned below it. There was nothing else but shadow, pressing in from all sides, and outside, men with guns and clubs and arrows.
“Come.” She took Matachanna by the arm, pulled her quickly toward the shaft of light.
Matachanna balked. “No! It’s forbidden. We can’t be here without a priest.”
“He cleansed us. He told us to enter.” Pocahontas felt her sister shivering. Is she more afraid of angry spirits, or angry men? Okeus, help us! “We must get away from the door, Matachanna. We have no weapons, no way to defend ourselves! We must hide!”
Matachanna sobbed, but she took a few steps toward the heart fire.
The shouts rose in a sudden pique, and the crack of a gunshot split the air. A small circle of fiery white suddenly appeared, hanging in the darkness. A moment later, Pocahontas realized the tassantassas’ bullet had pierced the temple wall. The odor of sulfur and heat, of fragmented bark, filled the long, dark hall.
Matachanna screamed and lurched about in the darkness, casting herself into the arrow-thin beam of light that shone through the bullet hole. It flickered over her face, which was white from clay dust and terror. Pocahontas froze, and the whole world became Matachanna’s wide, terrified eyes, the clay cracking on her face and falling like snow, her mouth open wide in a howl of fear. Pocahontas clapped her hand over her sister’s mouth. As if her spirit watched from far away, Pocahontas saw her hand pressed beneath Matachanna’s nose, pulling at her sister as they flashed in and out of the beam of light.
“Come! We must hide!” Pocahontas tugged harder, but Matachanna broke away. She staggered back into the darkness, away from the heart fire, fleeing Pocahontas’s hands.
Outside, a man screamed in pain. Pocahontas could not tell whether it was a tassantassa or a Real Man. Another shot exploded, a sound like a tree limb snapping beneath the weight of winter ice. Sending up a prayer for her sister’s safety—for the safety of all the men—Pocahontas fled deep into the temple.
She halted at the edge of the smoke hole’s ring of light. Motes moved in a lazy swirl, sparkling in the bright column. Their placid dance made an otherworldly counterpoint to the sounds of violence outside. The largest log in the heart fire’s stone ring split with a pop. Pocahontas leaped back as sparks streaked upward like a thin red arm reaching for the hole in the roof, grasping at the clay-white winter sky. She inched away from the pool of light, suddenly afraid, against all reason, that the tassantassas would see her through the walls of the temple unless she veiled herself in shadow.
Beyond the heart fire, in the deepest blackness against the temple’s rear wall, her hands found a row of chest-high platforms. She moved along the wall of niches, groping blindly, searching for a place to hide. She collided with a post and gasped at the sound of many bead chains clattering together. Her fingers found dry bundles of herbs; in her haste she crushed one, and the scent of sacred tobacco blossomed beneath the smell of years’ worth of dust. What is this place? Where can I hide? With a great effort, Pocahontas slowed her feet and hands, and her racing thoughts. She felt around her with more deliberate care, exploring the darkness with cold fingers.
She reached into one of the niches on the high platform. Her hands rested on something smooth and soft: buckskin. Beneath it was something hard as stone but light, rocking easily beneath her touch. She squeezed through the buckskin shroud. It fit easily into her palm and her fingers wrapped around it like the handle of a ladle or a digging stick.
All at once she knew what she held. Her scalp prickled, and a roaring in her ears blotted out the sounds of fighting outside. Bone.
It was the ossuary, the final resting place of werowances dead for generations. Once his bones were laid in a temple, the spirit of a chief would not return to the cycle of life, to be reborn endlessly in a new body, to live a new life as someone else. Instead, they joined with the Okeus in the world of the eternal, and never suffered the disintegration of self. It was the privilege of the werowance, to be for all time, intact and whole, never forgotten.
Pocahontas pulled her hands away from the bones quickly, as if burned. Then she touched them again, fearful and wondering. This was what she wanted. This was her ambition, her life’s dream: to be a werowansqua, powerful and strong, and in the end, to be herself forever. She ran her fingers down the length of a thighbone, feeling the knot at its end like the head of a war club. She trailed her touch over the curved sticks of ribs, the symmetrical stones of a spine. The old desire for influence sprang up in her spirit again.
“Speak,” she whispered to the bones, to the chiefs of old. She clutched at their dry remains through their burial bags, but the werowances had no words for her. The bones only shifted, moving together with a soft sound like rain on the river, like the clatter of a pigeon’s wings, a brief tumble of movement—then stillness—then the ancestors’ spirits were gone.
She thought of Matachanna, of the feather-thin ridges of clay around her eyes. She thought of Kocoum, rowing at her back, the drops of water from his paddle falling soft against her skin. She thought of her aunt Koleopatchika dropping groundnuts into a pot. None of them were chiefs. None would ever be. They were, had been, would be, other spirits, dug up out of brief, nameless bodies, turned back into the soil of life to sprout and grow anew. They were temporary. Their names were short and fragile things, to be chipped away by time and forgotten. But they were warm, present, flashing through her world in bright colors, puccoon and ochre, pearl and ash. They were drums at sunset, calling, real.
Here in the ossuary there was only darkness, and the bones were dry and cold.
Something sank deep into Pocahontas’s heart. It was a barb, an invisible arrow with a head sharper than flint. Its magic spread through her blood and pulsed along her trembling limbs. Her bones lit with a strange and poignant fire, and with her spirit’s eye she saw into her own body, and the marrow inside her glowed red and golden, ochre and puccoon. The well of her ambition gave one last heave as she clutched at the dead werowance’s bones. It bubbled, sighed, and bled itself dry. Where that dark, compelling water had once flowed, this new magic coursed like a gentle stream. It tasted of obligation and guilt, but also of love—love and joy, and the beautiful brevity of a life well lived. The savor of it was bitter and sweet.
A noise above her head ripped Pocahontas from her trance. Something clattered and rolled down the temple’s rounded roof. She jerked her hands away from the bones and listened in stunned fear as the object slid down the roof and then caught in the cracks of the bark instead of falling from the temple into the snow. Over the men’s war whoops and shouted commands, a crackling rush grew until the sound of it filled the entire world. Thick smoke pressed into her nose and mouth. This was not the smoke of the heart fire; it was dense and oily, rushing and hot.
The tassantassa’s torch! He threw it onto the roof!
The wall of the temple bloomed in the darkness like a red flower.
From far away, near the temple’s door, Matachanna called out to her. “Amonute! Pocahontas!”
She is safe, Pocahontas thought, watching the fire race along the wall of the temple, detached and accepting. Thank the Okeus.
The blaze lit up the interior of the temple, beating back the sacred mystery of shrouding darkness. Animal skins hanging along crossbeams smoldered; their claws and teeth cast leaping, jagged shadows into the hot red light. Rows of masks, hung on their pegs, stared downward as if in defeat. The wreaths of dried herbs that encircled each mask caught and blazed, ringing the spirits in haloes of fire.
“Pocahontas! Where are you?”
She moved toward her sister’s voice, toward the temple door, choking and gasping. She passed a niche in the wall, its beams licked by yellow flames. Inside, the dark figure of the Okeus himself stood defiant. She paused, star
ing up at the god in wonder. His body was as haggard as a starving man’s, the ribs and bones carved into the blackened wood in sharp, harsh relief. The face was hard as an eagle’s talons, all fierce angles and angry leer, the mouth open and ringed with teeth like a wolf’s fangs. White shell eyes stared back at her, knowing and sad. Then the hair caught fire, blazing in a knot of writhing red around the god’s stunned and helpless face.
Pocahontas ran.
She raced the fire down the length of the hall, her arms extended, pushing her way through the smoke. Hands caught at her. In the sickly light Matachanna held her and shrieked words that Pocahontas could not hear above the roar of the fire. She was still white from the sacred clay. Clinging together like beetles on a stem when the wind blows hard and fierce, the girls fought through the smoke and out the temple door.
The bitter cold of popanow was never so welcome. They ran from the burning temple and collapsed together in the field, weeping, heedless of the ongoing battle between the tassantassas and the Real Men. Pocahontas coughed again and again, hunched in the snow, a tearing paroxysm that left her weak and nauseous. Her throat was raw and painful, but finally she could breathe again. Matachanna pulled her upright, and Pocahontas stared at her sister, needing to satisfy herself that Matachanna was truly alive. The girl’s white clay mask was streaked with sweat and tears and darkened by soot—but she was well.
Pocahontas threw her arms around her. Tears of gratitude stung her eyes more fiercely than the smoke. Thank you, Okeus. The god’s last magic before he burned: he had spared Matachanna.
Still holding Matachanna, Pocahontas dared to glance around the clearing. The snowfield was trampled and, where the tassantassas had fallen, painted bright with blood. Wisps of steam rose from their bodies, from the places where their life’s blood drained away into the snow. A harsh wind blew through the forest. It fanned the flames of the temple and shivered the arrows protruding from the tassantassas’ chests.
But not one of the Real Men was harmed.
Powhatan lifted his wolfskin cloak from the earth and wrapped it carefully around his body, again stooped with age. His war club lay discarded in the snow at his feet.
Utta-ma-tomakkin knelt in the snow, rocking before the sight of Uttamussak in flames, his face cradled in his hands.
A hoarse, wordless scream ripped through the air. Opechancanough stormed to the body of the nearest tassantassa and kicked it. The dead man’s arm lifted under the blow, and then fell with a limp thud, like a stone dropped into a mudhole. Opechancanough seized the man’s arm and hauled the body onto his shoulder. His warriors scrambled to heft the bodies of the other tassantassas, following Opechancanough down the trail toward the canoes.
Pocahontas and Matachanna stared at each other, silent and shivering in the snow. Then Pocahontas rose stiffly. She pulled her sister to her feet. Together with Powhatan, they followed Opechancanough down the trail.
The werowance of Pamunkey dropped the dead body in one of the dugout canoes. The rest of the tassantassas slid from the warriors’ shoulders like deer carcasses after the hunt.
“Food,” Opechancanough raged. Paint had rubbed from his chest in wide smears; the crossed bows of Pamunkey burned like proud scars through the remains of his ceremonial trappings. “Do they want food? Do they want bread?”
His eyes fell on Pocahontas. He was upon her in three swift strides. She cowered, but he did not want her. Instead, he seized the soot-blackened bag of fresh bread that still hung from her shoulder. He tore it from her body with a violent wrench; she staggered and her singed cloak ripped away, leaving her exposed in the wind.
“Bread for the tassantassas! Bread for our brother Chawnzmit!”
Opechancanough reached a fist into the bag. He pulled out a great lump of bread; the golden cornmeal crumbled between his tight-clenched fingers. He pried open the mouth of one of the dead tassantassas, stuffed the fistful of bread inside. Pocahontas did not dare to breathe, let alone speak or weep, as her uncle forced the remaining ceremonial bread into the mouths of the dead men. Opechancanough hurled the empty bag into the river.
“If the white men want our bread,” he snarled, raising one foot to the bow of the canoe, “let them have it.” And he shoved hard, sending the dugout into the rising tide. It glided, hanging for a moment, motionless in the center of the river, and then drifted slowly downstream, toward Jamestown.
Shaking, Pocahontas retrieved her cloak from the riverbank. She bundled herself in its warmth, but the chill had sunk deep into her spirit and bones. She recalled Chawnzmit’s words as they stood together in the garden of Jamestown. Because I will do as I must, it is not safe for you here. Not anymore.
Opechancanough stalked up the muddy bank. His face was calm, his rage, for the moment, spent.
Pocahontas raised her voice, never knowing where her courage came from. “Chawnzmit will be even more desperate now.” She sounded so small, so weak and impermanent, standing among these men who still thrummed with the heat of war. “He will be desperate enough to attack the capital—he will fall on Werowocomoco.”
Powhatan turned to stare after the drifting canoe.
“I agree,” said Opechancanough. She looked up at him in surprise. His voice was deceptively gentle, his eyes far too calm. “We must be prepared, Brother.”
Powhatan nodded. “The time has come. It is certain. We must do away with Chawnzmit, for the good of all.”
SMITH
January 1609
John Smith eased himself to the ground, edging as near Powhatan’s fire as he dared. The Great Chief’s longhouse was warm and dry; even the earthen floor was dry. It was a luxury no structure in Jamestown could boast. Try as they might, the cabins and tents of the fort remained cold and wet. The freezing damp of the New World winter had become a part of Smith’s being, as much a fact of his life as beard and bones and flesh—what little flesh remained to him. The warm days of autumn seemed a lifetime ago, a time so long past it had acquired the trappings of legend. But here, at Powhatan’s fire, he could recall that the ancient myth had been born out of fact. A thousand years gone, John Smith had been warm and dry. In spite of the obvious danger, knowing full well he had walked willingly into a trap, Smith gave himself over to the sheer pleasure of physical comfort. Christ alone knew when such a blessing might come again.
Seated to his left, John Russell also huddled close to the flames. The man had once been large—exceedingly heavy, in fact. But months of privation had stripped him down, peeling away his fleshy exterior as easily as an Indian maiden peels husks from corn, until only a frame of broad bone remained. Russell, though a gentleman born and bred, had never raised a word of complaint about the conditions at Jamestown. The man had always been quick to lend his considerable strength to the work of maintaining the fort. He was a rare breed, intelligent and capable in spite of his heritage of lofty privilege, and so John Smith had brought him along on this mission, a task he knew would be both dangerous and delicate.
Smith held his palms out to the fire. He glanced up at Powhatan. The Great Chief sat aloof on his pile of furs. For once no wives lounged about him and no maiden daughters worked in the shadowy corners of the longhouse. Two stocky warriors stood like well-made statues to either side of Powhatan’s bed.
Smith was no fool. He knew what the absence of women meant. Every snap of a twig that carried through the longhouse walls, every scrape of moccasin on snow, set his heart racing and his mind on edge, even while he affected a posture of casual unconcern. Hunger had made him animalistic, had sharpened something inside him. He was alert for the signs of ambush, all his overtaxed senses straining for information. Had he been a horse or a hound, his nose would have lifted to taste the cautious air, and his ears would have twitched unceasingly.
“So,” Smith said, speaking the Indian tongue. Now that his hands were thawed, he kept one hand upon his buckler shield, and the other never strayed far from
the butt of his snaphaunce. “You invited us here to trade our guns for food. Here we sit.”
Powhatan made no reply, not even a grunt. He looked pointedly away from Smith’s face. It was a gesture of dismissal, a great rudeness from a natural. These Indians with their particular and prickly sense of propriety, their very strange concepts of etiquette and decorum!
Smith tried another approach: “We have only come at your summons, mamanatowick. Had you not called us, we would not be here.”
“And when will you be leaving again?”
A response, of sorts. It was better than silence. “We came for the food you offered.”
Powhatan lifted a hand and flicked it: a curt dismissal of a lie, though Smith had spoken the truth. The Great Chief had offered them food.
“I never said I would feed you, Chawnzmit.”
Smith nodded to each of the silent warriors. “Ah, but Chief Powhatan, the two men who carried your message to Jamestown stand here before me. Do not think I don’t recognize their faces. They know the truth of it. Your own people know you offered food for guns.”
The old chief’s face cracked suddenly, a wide grin. His eyes twinkled with real mirth.
A jape, Smith thought with some relief, still straining for the sounds of men creeping up outside. If he japes with me, perhaps the situation is not as dire as I feared.
“You have me there, Chawnzmit. If you want the food, then, you had best give me your guns and swords first.”
Swords? Not a part of the original offer. Not that Smith had intended to hand over firearms to the naturals. The runaways who had been sent back to Jamestown in a dugout canoe, arrows in their chests and corn bread in their gaping mouths, had been stripped of their guns. Somewhere in the Tidewater, five warriors were already slinking through the forest with matchlocks lit and murder in their hearts. They were five too many for Smith’s liking.
Tidewater: A Novel of Pocahontas and the Jamestown Colony Page 28