Tidewater: A Novel of Pocahontas and the Jamestown Colony

by Libbie Hawker

  When the tassantassas had made her understand at last that Chawnzmit was dead—that he had been killed by a great, terrible, roaring burst when a spark had fallen on a keg of gunpowder, and she was too late—she had pushed her way back through the men’s hands to her canoe. The crows gathered along the great ship’s line had burst into flight as she rowed past, screaming their mockery through a cloud of black feathers and a clatter of wings.

  She had paddled hard upriver, arms burning against the current, eyes burning with tears. When her vision finally cleared, she let her paddle rest and fell back downstream, the dugout spinning broadside into the current as she fished her knife from her traveling bag.

  She had seized the braid of her girlhood and sawed at it with her bone blade. The hair made a tearing rasp, and swung in sudden freedom around her face. She dropped it over the side, not bothering to salvage its few poor ornaments: the handful of shell beads, the shining copper disc, the white feather she had worn for luck.

  Her childhood drifted down into the secret places of the river, into the cold and the unknowable darkness. It was finally over—Chawnzmit, Amonute, the tassantassas—done.

  The trek home had taken many more days than her trip downriver. She paddled in silence; her small body strained against the hard thrust of the current, neck tense, shoulders aching. She made landfall every afternoon, unable to row any farther, panting from the exertion and the ill luck of it all. How the spirits mocked her, that she should travel so far only to learn that Chawnzmit was dead! At night she changed her paddings of moss and threw her blood magic into the fire—burning her spirit, turning all her power to smoke, wafting away the last vestiges of who she had been.

  It was a wise voice that had directed her to Opechancanough’s hearth. And once she had told him the news of Chawnzmit’s death, she presented herself at Powhatan’s fire, too.

  The old man lay bundled on his bed. The white dog the tassantassas had given him sat nearby, one slender paw on Powhatan’s furs, taking morsels of food from his fingers while a woman crooned a gentle song from somewhere close by.

  Pocahontas stood in front of him and allowed him to take in the sight of her with braid shorn and forelock growing, with the apron of womanhood—such as it was, that poor scrap of silk grass—hanging from her narrow hips. The old mamanatowick’s eyes had filled with a mix of pride and loss, but he gave his blessing to her union, pronouncing Kocoum a fine and fitting husband.

  She kissed his wrinkled cheek, avoiding the dog as it tried to lick her hand, and walked quickly from the stifling confines of his great house.

  She found the trail that led to her own small longhouse. The strawberries had ceased to fruit, and the few berries that had been left unharvested lay soft and cloying in the dust of the trail. Persimmons slowly ripened on the boughs of their shrubby trees. A rabbit startled and bolted across her path, the flash of its white tail winking like a star in the undergrowth.

  She rounded a bend. From the direction of her longhouse came the rise and fall of many women’s voices, passing the rounds of a chant through their ranks.

  A woman comes, a woman comes

  She comes with digging stick and bowl

  She comes with basket, gourd, and bread

  She comes to warm her husband’s bed!

  The wedding song.

  Pocahontas broke into a run, loping like the rabbit in long, bounding strides. She burst into the yard of her longhouse. A ring of girls and women moved in a circle, stepping sideways, turn and clap, and the song started again, first from this side of the ring, then the other.

  A woman comes, a woman comes

  She comes with mill and stores of corn

  She comes with blood that brings new life

  She comes with sheath for husband’s knife!

  Within the dancing ring, a handful of unblooded girls clamored, holding pots of paint high, shaking between them a long cape of fine, pale buckskin. Koleopatchika directed them with quick words and sharp gestures—Koleopatchika, sister of the mamanatowick, standing in the rightful place of a mother. It could only be a daughter of Powhatan, motherless here in Orapax but never alone, who went to her marriage bed.

  Pocahontas pushed through the circle of dancers. “Matachanna!”

  The unblooded girls looked up from their work. They held between them the marriage cape; it stretched across the yard like a cloud come to earth.

  Pocahontas’s eyes traveled up the length of the cape. It was embellished in roanoke, the purple-black beads worked into row upon row of tight spirals. At its center, the blocky form of a male body stood out against the snowy leather, and from the figure’s head rose a pair of spreading, jagged antlers. A fitting symbol for the bride of a priest.

  Above the cloak, a face finely painted in ash and puccoon stared back at her. A black line divided Matachanna’s face at the cheekbones, tracking over the bridge of her nose; she was red to the hairline, and her astonished eyes looked all the rounder in their mask. Her chin was still swollen and pink between the vertical bars of her new tattoo: the mark of a high-status wife.

  For one cold-clutching moment, Pocahontas feared Matachanna would scorn her again, as she had so many times. But Matachanna yelped, a high bark like a wolf calling to its pack, and rushed through the crowd of girls to Pocahontas’s side.

  “Pocahontas! I thought you were dead!” She pulled her sister into a tight embrace. “Oh, won’t you please forgive me? I was terrible to you, and I’m sorry.”

  “It’s I who should beg forgiveness,” Pocahontas said quietly, close to Matachanna’s ear, to be heard over the renewed round of the wedding song. Her sister smelled of smoke and sweet herbs, of tobacco and salt tears. She smelled of home.

  “I won’t hear it. My Mischief. I would kiss you, but I’d smear my puccoon.”

  Pocahontas smiled shyly, glanced down at her makeshift apron. “I have a new name.”

  “Okeus! You’re a woman now, too. Think of it, both of us in the same month. It is powerful magic. We are bonded together.”

  “More than sisters,” Pocahontas agreed.

  They whispered their new names, smiling, laughing, clinging to one another tight as burrs.

  “Matoaka is a good name,” Matachanna said. “but I will never call you anything but Pocahontas.”

  “And you will always be Matachanna to me, even if everyone else calls you Coanuske.”

  Snow woman. Pocahontas burned to know the vision that had inspired her sister’s new name, but of course such a thing could never be told. And she ached in turn to share the mystery of her own name vision: the rush of flight, the words on the wind, the fire that kindled itself for the good of all the people who gathered around its small but brilliant light. She pulled Matachanna into another embrace and felt her spirit throb against her sister’s skin. She felt the magic of their two visions mingle, Pocahontas’s fire and Matachanna’s secret snow.

  Matachanna pulled away, grinning. “I want you to carry the white beads today, Pocahontas.”

  A singular honor. Pocahontas blushed as she accepted the long strand of pearls. She twined them through her fingers while the girls pinned the white cape about Matachanna’s shoulders. The dancers sang the final chorus, and together they led Matachanna to the dancing grounds of Orapax, where Utta-ma-tomakkin stood beautiful and proud at the fireside, waiting to receive his bride.

  They swore their hearts to one another and clasped hands above a gourd full of water. Pocahontas stretched the cord of pearls tight and brought it down upon their hands. The chain broke with a loud snap. Pearls showered over the dancing ground, bouncing and rolling, and the girls who had led Matachanna scrambled in the dust to collect them.

  Pocahontas looked out through the laughing crowd as the drums began to pulse. The broken ends of the bead chain still swung from her fingers. She caught sight of a welcome face passing through the gathering, the so
lemn brow and strong nose emerging between smiling faces, and then vanishing again as he made his way out of the ring.

  She pushed through the crowd to catch him.

  “Kocoum,” she called, taking hold of his elbow.

  “Amonute.” He took in the shortness of her hair and glanced down at the apron with its heron and its ring of fire. “Oh.”

  She slipped her hand into his. A breathless thrill filled her chest, quaking her body with every step. But she did not pull away. She tugged him away from the crowd, and they made their way once more to the shelf of stone that stood high above the river, where they had watched the night fishers in the purple twilight. There were no night fishers now. The sun was full and soft on the river as all the world celebrated the union of Matachanna and Utta-ma-tomakkin.

  “You are a woman now,” Kocoum said sensibly.

  She smiled at the undisguised expectation in his voice. “My answer is still yes. I have told my father and my uncle of my choice. I have told them I choose you.”

  He bent and kissed her—not on the forehead or the cheek, as a friend would do, but full on the mouth. She gasped; the quivering in her body rose in pitch like a paddle drum when its skin is tightened. A very unwomanly giggle threatened to burst from her chest. She quelled it with a bear-strong effort.

  When the season of nepinough arrived, calling grapes from the vine and ears from the corn plants, it was Pocahontas who donned the white cape of marriage. Her cloak’s design was simple: a heron in white shell beads, barely visible against the pale drape of doeskin. Her chin was not tattooed, for she was only a common wife, and her red paint was bloodroot. But as she stood in the center of the dancing ring with Kocoum, she had never felt so grateful, nor had she felt so blessed.

  Matachanna stretched the white chain in the air between Pocahontas and her husband. The shell beads snapped across their clasped hands, filling the autumn-blue sky with a shower of stars.

  OPECHANCANOUGH

  Season of Popanow

  One year later

  The troop of warriors sank to their bellies in the cornfield. The late-season husks did not give so much as a whisper to betray the ambush. The spent leaves of the plants drooped, yellow and dry, like the white-and-red flags atop the tassantassas’ ships. Opechancanough surveyed the field, satisfied by its silence, and moved to the garden’s edge to await the arrival of his trading partners.

  Chawnzmit was dead. The ravening white wolf was truly gone. Only a shiver of loathing remaining in Opechancanough’s bones to remind him that the ill dream called Chawnzmit had ever truly walked Tsenacomoco. When the new-made woman Matoaka had brought him the tidings, he had not dared to believe them, though his spirit vibrated with hope and renewed resolve.

  But more than a year had passed, and no one had seen a hint of Chawnzmit’s presence. The previous winter, when the tassantassas ventured out to raid the southern territories, their efforts were easily rebuffed—something unheard of under Chawnzmit’s rule. Throughout the cold, wet seasons when nothing would grow, Opechancanough had taken advantage of the tassantassas’ new meekness and obvious desperation to lure them into snares. His other chiefs had done likewise, and hardly a month went by without some warrior boasting of taking a tassantassa’s life. Soon enough the white men no longer left their fort at all, withdrawing behind their high palisade to lick their bleeding wounds.

  But popanow had come once more with lowering skies, with mornings whitened by frost. The tassantassas knew, as Opechancanough knew, that they would soon be like wounded bears backed against a cliff wall: roaring in fear, wielding their deadly claws . . . but desperate and frightened enough to blunder.

  He watched as the large, white-winged boat they called shallop appeared around the river’s bend, lumbering like a wood buffalo in a muddy wallow. There were many men aboard that boat. They watched from the rail with strained, pale faces, and even at a distance Opechancanough could feel the hope gasp in the white men’s thin breasts. He made the sign of welcome as they anchored and filled a smaller boat with men. He gestured as they came onto the shore, wary, crouched, like kicked dogs slinking away from a cook fire.

  Here, Opechancanough said, motioning with both hands to row upon row of baskets heaped high with corn. Here is what I give you.

  The men eyed the corn as they eyed him, their stilt-thin legs stepping nervously and heads bobbing like wading birds probing in the mud. Opechancanough smiled and spoke soothing words, though they did not understand. He gestured eagerly, encouraging the men to take the bait.

  One of them shouldered his musket and stooped to lift a basket. It came up quickly, far lighter than it looked. The tassantassa exclaimed in dismay; he upended the basket to reveal how its bottom had been pushed up to create a high mound. The corn was piled atop that mound—far less grain than a basket ought to hold—so that what had seemed a heaping pile of corn was nothing but a thin skin of trickery.

  Their leader barked harsh words and pushed close to Opechancanough’s face. His breath smelled of rot.

  Opechancanough smiled.

  The tassantassas leveled their guns toward him while their leader went on barking, no doubt demanding the full allotment of corn, as Opechancanough’s messengers had agreed.

  Let them clamor like crows in a naked tree. They will not shoot me; they need my corn, or they will starve. His grin widened.

  Opechancanough turned his head away from the white man’s foul breath. He gave a great whoop, high and sharp, then dropped to his belly in the dust.

  The cornfield released a loud hiss as warriors rose from among the clattering leaves with bows drawn. The tassantassas wailed in dismay. A few shots cracked the air; the stink of their weapons singed Opechancanough’s throat. But none of the Real People grunted in pain. The tassantassas were poor shots these days, their eyes weakened by hunger and their arms always shaking.

  Most of the white men fell in the first volley of arrows. Four threw down their guns in a panic and made for the shore. Their guns were useless now—Opechancanough had learned that guns took time to reload. They could not be armed as quickly as one nocks an arrow to a bowstring. Still, even emptied of their bullets, the guns might be useful. He would collect them when his business here was finished.

  Opechancanough watched from the ground as the next flight of arrows dropped two in their tracks, as easily as deer are picked off in an open meadow.

  The men still aboard the shallop shouted and scuttled over the deck of their ship. The anchor came up, and the boat lifted on the current, moving swiftly downstream while the abandoned pair of tassantassas cowered and cursed on the strand.

  Opechancanough raised his fist, and the warriors subsided.

  He strolled casually down to the riverbank. The tassantassas wrestled the landing boat out into the water, eyes wide, panting and frothing like deer run into the ground. They shoved off in their small boat, the oars tapping weakly at the water. The white men cried out for mercy as he unslung his bow from his shoulder.

  Pushed-up baskets, he mused, chuckling as he took aim. Too simple.

  Opechancanough fired. One white man gurgled and slumped; the boat spun in a rapid circle as the remaining tassantassa rowed frantically. His keen of terror was like a bird’s thin cry.

  Chawnzmit would never have fallen for pushed-up baskets.

  Opechancanough fired again and the last oar dropped into the water.

  But Chawnzmit is dead.

  An especially harsh winter fell over Tsenacomoco that year. Snowdrifts grew to knee deep, ponds and marshes froze solid, and the roar of the falls was almost silenced. Now and then great chunks of ice would drift past the deadened shores of Orapax, evidence of a mighty freeze beyond the fall line, unlike any seen in Opechancanough’s memory.

  Word traveled slowly in such conditions, but still rumors crept upriver against the icy currents and tumbling ice. The ferocity of popanow dealt a he
avy blow to the tassantassas. With Chawnzmit gone, there was no sharp mind to control their trade, and the white men quickly bartered away all their valuable goods for meager quantities of food. Now no Real People would visit the fort with sacks of cornmeal or baskets of tuckahoe, for the tassantassas were known to possess only trash—and guns, which they still could not be made to part with. They starved now in earnest. Those scouts who made their delayed reports to Powhatan told of white men dying so rapidly that those still living could not dig graves in the frozen earth fast enough to bury them. And as the weeks of bitter cold and darkness ground onward, reports arrived that the tassantassas had resorted to eating their dead.

  Opechancanough spat in disgust when he heard it, though in truth he had expected the white men to gnaw each other’s bones long before this. Had not Chawnzmit admitted that his people ate the flesh of men those years ago, when Opechancanough had led his captive in triumph from village to village?

  Yet, even as his hatred for the tassantassas grew, an assured peace burrowed into Opechancanough’s spirit, nestling like a pup at its dam’s belly, warm and contented. This was truly the last season of the tassantassas. He had only to persevere a few weeks more, and the last of them would be gone.

  Opechancanough’s contentment was rudely strangled at the first hint of a thaw. The falls swelled and began to roar with a redoubled voice. Blue blocks of ice drifted in greater quantities, flashing by Orapax on a rapid current. The snow rotted beneath a crust toughened by warming mornings and freezing nights. Now when Opechancanough made his way through the forest clearings to meet the southern messengers, wrapped in a wolfskin cloak, he broke through the crust with every other step, and his shins were soon cut and bruised from the icy edges of his own deep footprints.

  A messenger waited for him in a patch of yellow sunlight. The man was bundled in a cougar’s pelt, and a hood of weasel skins was tied close about his ears, but the dark vertical tattoos of Paspahegh showed in the gaps of his fur-lined leggings.