Tidewater: A Novel of Pocahontas and the Jamestown Colony

by Libbie Hawker

  “Matoaka.” A kindled fire.

  She reached Jamestown late the same day, just as the afternoon light began to slant lazily from the west. She had forgotten the harsh smell of the place, the sharp acridity of white men’s sweat and damp wool, of waste and rot and gunpowder.

  Their great ships rested in their accustomed place, tied by heavy lines to the largest and sturdiest trees near the water’s edge. The flags on the ships’ central posts lifted and flapped on a stray breeze, exposing for a moment the red cross on its white field. A group of crows squabbled along the taut line of one ship, and they glared down at her with sharp, malevolent eyes as she paddled beneath the tight-strung ropes.

  She smiled to hear the watcher cry “Halloo!” from his high lookout tower. It brought to mind happier days, when she had come bearing gifts from her father, when there had been hope in Powhatan’s longhouse that the tassantassas might become allies and the old mamanatowick had brimmed with youthful energy.

  She beached her canoe and moved carefully up the strand, slipping in the thick, stagnant mud.

  “Who goes there?” came the tassantassa challenge.

  She pressed a hand to her heart. “I am the princess.”

  The palisade gates flung wide for her. Men gathered in their accustomed throng, staring and murmuring. Many faces she recalled, but several were new: in the months since Powhatan had vacated Werowocomoco, the tassantassas had brought more men from their far-off land. They still looked thin and underfed. The dark-blue circles beneath their eyes showed plainly in their pale faces. Their bushy beards did little to disguise the sharpness of their features. Privation had hacked at them like a stone axe against soft wood, leaving rough edges in its wake.

  She smiled at them as she entered the fort, reassuring them with gestures and words that she came in friendship, even though she brought no gifts of food.

  The fort itself had grown. More of the peak-roofed buildings had sprouted, and some had merged together like longhouses; the fresh new planks that joined them stood out bright and golden against the older, weathered wood. The trampled mire in the center of the fort was crisscrossed with flat wooden walkways, damp bridges that barely kept the men’s feet out of the water as they rushed forward to greet her.

  “Princess, what news do you bring?”

  “Have you any food for us?”

  She held out her empty hands. “I have come to speak to Chawnzmit.”

  A silence fell over the crowd. The men twisted and crushed their hats in their hand. She remembered how Chawnzmit had done the same as he stood in the garden she had built for him. She recalled the sunlight limning the edges of his beard with copper brightness.

  “Where is Chawnzmit?”

  A big man stepped forward, ducking his head in apology. His eyes were sad, and shifted this way and that as if he could not bring himself to meet her gaze. She searched through her memory for the man’s name. Chawn-russ-l.

  “I am sorry, Princess,” Chawn-russ-l said. His voice was as mournful as a brown dove’s. “Chawnzmit is dead.”

  OPECHANCANOUGH

  Season of Cohattayough

  Opechancanough worked his knife carefully into the new mulberry bow. He had chosen the best and most flexible sapling he could find, and planed the staff carefully while it was still wet from soaking. He sheared away strips of fresh white wood with a broad flint cutter until the staff was perfectly flat on both of its long faces. The handle he had left round and thick, and he had teased the wood with a knife and handfuls of sand, rubbed beneath a scrap of leather, until it fit exactly in his palm. The notches at each end were the final touch. They had to align in perfect symmetry, small enough to hold the sinew-braid bowstring securely, but wide enough to allow the correct degree of give and snap as the bow was bent and fired.

  He had not intended to soothe his spirit with bowmaking. It was only a chore that needed doing; his old bow was beginning to show the first signs of failure—minute cracks near the handle and an alarming catch in the song of taut bent wood when he drew upon the string. It would not do to dwell so near Massawomeck territory with a faulty bow, and so he had set about making a new one. As he worked, however, the process of creation seemed to settle something deep in his chest.

  As the mulberry sapling bent beneath his hands, the image of Tsena-no-ha faded from his mind. When Opechancanough brushed away the sand from the staff, leaving a smooth luster, he also brushed away his fears for his aging brother. He concentrated on the knife in his hand, the responsive spring of the mulberry wood, and the whippy lightness of his fine new weapon. As he did, he flung aside the dark cloud of anger that had stalked him for years like a manitou in the forest.

  He sat cross-legged, engrossed in his work, occasionally glancing up to smile at the women who bustled about his yard. They were painted and adorned finer than women ought to be for the mundane work of storing groundnuts and sun-dried berries in his cellar. Each woman hoped she might become the mistress of his hearth, his new wife—or one wife of many, should he assume the mantle of the Chief of Chiefs.

  Winganuske moved through the women like a canoe downriver, direct and smooth, gliding with a confidence none of the others possessed. Opechancanough’s smile faded when he saw her. She was as beautiful as ever with her round, wide face and enchanting eyes—the favorite of Powhatan, the great love that warmed the old man’s heart. Opechancanough knew what she wanted, but when the time came for him to choose a wife, he would not choose her, even if she left Powhatan’s hearth willingly. He would not take everything from his brother. Not everything.

  The flock of women whispered and laughed as they beat softness back into his sleeping mats, shook out his furs in the sunlight, and picked moth casings from the edges of the plush skins. The sound was good—the laughter, the feminine joy. It renewed the grin on his face and brought a slow, appreciative chuckle to his chest. Months after the move to Orapax, when the straggling Massawomeck scouts had finally been warded away with constant patrols through the woods, he was finally settling in. This new longhouse was beautiful—well built with a good, tight weave of bark on its walls and roof. The bedsteads inside were springy and comfortable, and the heart fire tended with affectionate care by his youngest sister, Koleopatchika. He wanted for nothing but a special woman to manage such a fine house.

  Koleopatchika ducked through the door of the yehakin with another bundle of furs. She cast some bawdy joke at the women as she handed the furs around, and they began shaking out the dust and accumulated ash in the yard. Opechancanough raised a hand in greeting, thinking to call out his thanks to his sister. But she stared beyond him, her mouth forming a shocked dark circle. “Oh!” she cried, the wolfskin hanging limp in her hands.

  Opechancanough sprang from his rock, whirled about to face the forest. He expected some danger, an enemy, a Massawomeck warrior raiding for blood or—Okeus protect him, the hated tassantassas come to shatter his fragile, newfound peace.

  What he saw only redoubled his surprise.

  A strange specter emerged from the wood. It had the body of a very young woman, barely out of girlhood, with a curiously thin and flimsy apron draped over its loins. The hair had been sliced off bluntly at chin length, and ruffled in the slight wind of her movement. Above her ears and brow, bristly dark hair grew out from the shaven pate of childhood. It would not be shaven again. He realized with a sudden twist of anxiety that he looked upon an initiate, a new wielder of the life-giving blood.

  Superstitiously, he stepped away, averting his eyes. Women were full of unpredictable magic at this turn of their lives, the bend in the trail that a man could never comprehend. Spirits might hang close about her—or manitou.

  But as his gaze slid from her body, he caught a brief flash of the dimple in her chin, and recognized the new-made woman.

  “Amonute.”

  “Uncle.”

  She came to stand at his side. Cautiou
sly, he glanced at her face. The dark, slanted eyes were still familiar, still the same eyes she’d had as a girl. What else did you expect, you fool? The simple sameness of her face calmed his fear of magic, and yet he detected something in her countenance that was not the same—something lost, something brushed away like the sand from his new bow. Something that was gone forever.

  “I have a new name now,” she said quietly. “Matoaka.”

  He nodded. Of course she had a new name. All Real People took new names at the great moments of their lives, when they became again, when the world changed them, or they changed the world. Boys emerged from the huskanaw with new names. Chiefs took new identities when they claimed their territories.

  “I would speak with you, if I may, Uncle.”

  Opechancanough sent the women away. They went muttering, casting wondering glances back at Amonute as they left. He held the flap of the door aside for her to pass, and then followed her into the cool shadows of his longhouse.

  She sank to the floor at the heart fire, waiting patiently while he shifted his weight from one foot to the other, caught in indecision. Should he sit beside her, as a brother would do? Or should he seat himself upon his bedstead, high and strong like a chief? He was unused to this indecision, this softness and muddle.

  I am a werowance, after all—and her werowance, no less, for she is Pamunkey-born.

  Opechancanough settled onto the bed. Without furs or mats to cushion him, the frame creaked loudly beneath his weight.

  “What would you speak of, Amo . . .” He caught himself and laughed in embarrassed apology. “Matoaka?”

  “I have come to tell you that I wish to marry the warrior Kocoum.”

  Opechancanough heard this in silence, allowed that silence to stretch. An orphaned girl might approach her werowance about her marriage wishes, but Matoaka’s father still lived. Powhatan lay in his longhouse not far from here, dreaming in the dark of his own faded strength. At last he said, “Does your father know of this?”

  “I have not told him yet. I have not seen him. I’ve only just returned.”

  “Returned from where?” He recalled hearing the concerned whispers among his train of hopeful women, rumors that little Amonute had vanished in the night. That was more than ten days ago. He looked at her more closely, peering through the red mist of his own superstition, his mistrust of newly realized blood. Her body was strong and lean. The girlish arms were hard with taut new muscle. “You have been paddling.”

  “For many days.”

  “And where did you go?”

  Her eyes flicked up to meet his; she held his gaze with an impertinent stare, and then dropped her face once more.

  It’s her old boldness that’s gone—or mostly gone. She is softer now. Changed.

  And yet she did not answer immediately, which was a boldness in itself.

  “I have not yet told my father of my preference for Kocoum, because I know who truly holds the power in Tsenacomoco. I saw you kill the tassantassas at Uttamussak. I saw you fill their mouths with bread. I saw in that moment that Powhatan is not the man he once was. After all, here we are in Orapax, and not in Werowocomoco where we belong.”

  “Powhatan’s reasons for leaving Werowocomoco were sound.”

  She tilted her head as if considering his assertion. The ends of her short, tufted hair turned ruddy in the firelight. “We will soon call another man Powhatan, I think.”

  “Not I. There are some things I will not take from my brother. His name is one of them.”

  She shrugged. “Mamanatowick, then.”

  At the sound of the title, a swell rose in his middle like a great sea wave, pressing from below against his heart. He felt twin blades cut at him, gratification and fear, cleaving into his spirit with a sudden, sharp force. No one had yet called him mamanatowick save for this child—this woman. But the title felt right. Right, and inevitable, and weighted with sorrow.

  “Matoaka, you once relished your work with the tassantassas.”

  She flinched, an almost imperceptible twitch of her mouth, but she waited in silence for him to continue, her hands folded patiently in her aproned lap.

  “When I am mamanatowick in truth—when all the world knows it—the tassantassas must be driven away or killed. Do you understand why?”

  “Yes,” she said at once. He had expected a thoughtful silence, perhaps even a childish protest. But she did not hesitate. “I will not interfere with your plans. My ambitions cost our people much. I know that, and I am sorry for it. But those ambitions belonged to Amonute, not to Matoaka. Matoaka wants only what is best for the Real People.”

  He sighed, gave a weary exhalation. “I don’t think it is your fault, woman. I doubt you are as much to blame as you might feel. Chawnzmit is crafty. He would have found a way to take our food, to make his weak people prosperous no matter what any of us did. He is more manitou than man. You are not to blame—not entirely.”

  She hung her head. Opechancanough could not be sure whether tears shone in her eyes or whether some reciprocal spark glittered back at the firelight.

  “Tell me,” he said, “why Kocoum?”

  “He is a good hunter, a good warrior . . .”

  “Oh, yes. All women say that of the men they wish to marry. What else draws you to him?”

  “He is common. Like me. As his wife, I can fade from the sight of the Real People. I can hide from my shame, my involvement with the tassantassas. I will sit beside no werowance, displaying myself before the eyes of my tribe, reminding them of the part I played in”—she gestured helplessly, limply, indicating Orapax beyond the longhouse walls—“this.”

  “That is wise,” he said, approving and rather startled to hear such serious thoughts from the mouth of the same little Mischief who had thrown herself across Chawnzmit’s body, fearlessly stealing the boast from her brother.

  Wise. The word caused her to glance up and quickly away again, a shy smile of satisfaction on her lips.

  “But allow me to offer you some advice, Matoaka. It is not wise to wall yourself up, to keep yourself away from your tribe. I understand the impulse to fade away, to hide from your shame. Okeus knows I understand shame better than most men. But seclusion will only wound your spirit in the end.”

  She leaned away slightly, as if pushed by an invisible hand. Her face turned away. In its soft lines, still round with the traces of childhood, he saw a cloud of sorrow rise and eddy like a plume of smoke in a windless sky. It was all she wanted now: seclusion, and a respite from pain. After what she had been through—what they all had been through—he could not fault her. He wished for one heartbeat that he might have the same. A quiet life, laughter with a good woman beside him, the pounding of children’s running feet in his yard. Easy hunts, ample harvests, a fine mulberry bow that he never had cause to string, let alone to shoot at another man.

  But he was the mamanatowick. Or he would be, one inescapable day.

  Matoaka fixed a cheery smile to her face. She did have a lovely smile, open and bright. It flashed above her dimpled chin. “Have you any advice for me, Uncle? How shall I be a good wife to Kocoum?”

  Opechancanough huffed a laugh—abrupt and hoarse but not bitter. He recalled Tsena-no-ha waking away, how it inflamed his rage to know that she had found happiness at Pepiscunimah’s hearth rather than his own. He recalled with a clutch of shame how that rage had burned hot and wild in the ensuing years. Had Tsena-no-ha’s love ever been worth that twisting, sharp-toothed fury? Now that he had lost so much more—Werowocomoco, his brother’s strength, his dignity when Chawnzmit had caught him up by the hair and held him like a day-old pup before the bows of his own men—now he knew the hollow ache of true loss. Now he knew the banked, glowing smolder of true and righteous anger.

  “Yes, woman, I would give you advice,” Opechancanough said. His voice grated with stifled emotion. He wished with sudden, dizzy
ing surprise to find Pepiscunimah, not to harry the man with insults or violence, but to clasp his finger with his own. He wished to place a kiss on Tsena-no-ha’s lovely, imperious brow and wish her years of happiness. “Love your people as much as you love your husband. Serve your tribe, for the bond you have with your people is as important as the bond you will have with your mate. Perhaps it is more important.”

  Matoaka bowed her head in acceptance. Her newly short hair swung forward to hide her face. He did not need to see her face to know that his advice had been a disappointment to her, heartfelt as it was. The young woman was not the child; Matoaka was not Amonute. Matoaka had no desire for a public life, no appetite for power, no need to caper for the mamanatowick and charm him to her whims. She would retreat into the privacy of her longhouse as soon as she was able. Tsenacomoco would forget her, and she would be content.

  “Go to your father’s longhouse,” he said quietly. “Tell him.”

  She made her way down the hall. Already she moved more like a woman—not with a woman’s round-hipped sway, not with the fluid, appealing grace of Winganuske, but with a straight-backed confidence that even the child Amonute had not possessed.

  She lifted the door flap; white light flooded in around her. She paused, and turned back to face him. She was a silhouette: dark-featured and backlit by a bright and dancing sun. “You should know, Uncle. Chawnzmit is dead.”

  She ducked out. The door flap closed behind her with a soft, hollow thump.

  Opechancanough drew in a deep, ragged breath. For the first time in nearly a year, he felt hope stir. Perhaps the tassantassas could be destroyed after all, and sooner than later.

  POCAHONTAS

  Season of Cohattayough

  Downriver, far from Orapax, Pocahontas’s braid was adrift in the deep currents. She pictured it, tumbling end over end, slow as a snowflake drifting. Its ends unraveling, a black wavering net through which the tiny silver fishes darted and played. It might be out to sea now, surging and pooling with the movement of the waves, dancing like the long ropes of weed that greened the deepest tide pools.