Tidewater: A Novel of Pocahontas and the Jamestown Colony

by Libbie Hawker

  At last Nonoma hooked her arm through Pocahontas’s and declared, “And now you must meet my husband!”

  They found Japazaws in the dusty yard of his longhouse, gingerly tipping an old clay cook pot with one flat, dirty toe. He seemed displeased with the thing, though Pocahontas could not imagine why a man might interest himself in pots. Japazaws was not a tall man; his body was square and shambling, and his eyes were pinched in a perpetual squint. Pocahontas peered through her forelock at the werowance; he brought to mind the image of a mole scrabbling aboveground, groping for the entrance to its burrow. A laugh threatened to form on her tongue, and she pressed her lips together to chase it away.

  When Nonoma called brightly to him, Japazaws glanced up with an expression of mistrust—though perhaps it was only his natural squint that made him appear suspicious.

  “So you are Matoaka,” he said, eyeing her with the same grudging interest he had directed at the cook pot.

  She stared down at her feet, smiling meekly. She felt the weight of his narrow gaze press upon her spirit. Does he know why I have come? What does he suspect?

  “My Musqua-chehip has told me much about you.”

  Pocahontas flushed with mortification. She couldn’t imagine Nonoma saying anything kind or flattering about their shared childhood. Despite Nonoma’s display of hand waving and happy gossip, Pocahontas was certain Nonoma had never forgiven her for spitting into her face the first day they met.

  “Well,” Japazaws said gruffly, eyeing the pot once more, dismissing Pocahontas, “we are glad to host you here. You shall stay in Musqua-chehip’s longhouse. No doubt she will feed you well and show you off at the dancing ring tonight.”

  In Nonoma’s longhouse, Pocahontas was treated to another tour: this time of Nonoma’s many exotic possessions. Each of the bedsteads, every rack and peg was draped and piled and hung with rich, soft furs, many of which seemed to have come from creatures Pocahontas did not recognize. More trade with the white men. The brightly dyed lengths of wool had certainly come from the fort. Nonoma stroked a piece of the green cloth against her cheek and closed her eyes dreamily.

  “Oh, isn’t it strange and wonderful? It’s too scratchy to wear, of course, and it smells unpleasant when it’s wet. But I love to touch it and look at it.”

  “You certainly have a good deal of it.” Pocahontas lifted the edge of a length of blue wool. It was long enough to make two cloaks. The tassantassas never had so much cloth to spare in the days when Chawnzmit lived. They must be thriving at Jamestown.

  “Japazaws is a wonderful husband,” Nonoma said. “He allows me anything I desire. He never denies me. What is your husband like, Pocahontas?”

  “Kocoum? Well, he’s very brave. He is often . . . away.” She nearly said at war, but she did not think Nonoma, cooing among her draperies of exotic furs and colorful wool, would welcome talk of killing tassantassas.

  Nonoma giggled. “I remember Kocoum.” She pulled on her ears until they stuck out through the locks of her hair. “Such a somber man, too. Does he ever laugh with you? Japazaws is so merry! I know he’s many years older than I, but life is so easy with him. I hardly have to work at all. What a lovely thing, to be the wife of a great man.” She cut a swift, mocking glance toward Pocahontas.

  “Matachanna is married to Utta-ma-tomakkin,” Pocahontas said hotly, “as you well know. He is the highest priest in the land—and she takes great pleasure in working hard.”

  Nonoma tipped her head to one side, as if Pocahontas were no more than a witless child. “Matachanna? Oh, I could have sworn she’d received a new name. Did she not, after all? How tragic.”

  Pocahontas blushed. “Coanuske is her name.”

  “At any rate,” Nonoma said, as if Pocahontas had not spoken, “a priest is not the same thing as a werowance.”

  Anger surged, but Pocahontas shoved it into a distant part of her spirit. “I am very tired from the journey, Musqua-chehip. May I sleep now?”

  Nonoma left her alone with an admonishment to be fresh for the dancing at nightfall. When the door flap closed, Pocahontas rummaged through Nonoma’s belongings until she found a plain sleeping mat and a simple deerskin, untainted by the touch of Jamestown. She curled beneath it and lay scowling into the darkness.

  This is hopeless, her spirit cried again and again, hopeless. Nonoma would not be made to influence her husband for the good of the Real People. She was too in love with fine and rare things, caught by the tassantassas’ lure like a rabbit in a slipknot. She and her husband were best left to strangle in their pretty snare.

  In the morning I will tell my father’s warriors to take me home. I must face him in failure, but at least I will bring him the truth: Japazaws is already too far gone to return him to Powhatan’s control.

  When Nonoma came to wake her for the dancing, Pocahontas rose feeling every bit as cramped and foggy. She had not slept at all. Her spirit hung like a dried leaf on a cornstalk, limp and spent. The evening’s dance only depressed her more. The women of Passapatanzy had dressed in their finery to honor the visitor from Orapax—and as she stood swaying and clapping halfheartedly, everywhere Pocahontas turned she saw the shimmer and flash of bright-colored beads. As soon as a few women began to drift toward their longhouses, Pocahontas excused herself from the circle, too. This time she did not need to feign exhaustion. But when she crept beneath the deerskin, wiping silent tears away with the coarse, earthy hide, sleep still evaded her.

  “But I want to!”

  A squealing voice woke Pocahontas, sharp and high against the sweetness of morning birdsong. She rubbed her gritty eyes, wincing at the ray of pale light that descended from the smoke hole. The interior of Nonoma’s longhouse smelled of wool. The scent raised memories of Chawnzmit, rippling and indistinct like a distant cloud. He smiled at her through a mist; tried the Real word for dawn on his clumsy tongue. A dull pain, a slow throb of regret, pulsed in Pocahontas’s head. It raised a prickling flush to her cheeks. Motes spilled down the beam of morning light like ice flowing on the river. She recalled in wonder the English words for sunrise and sadness. They were the same. Morning, mourning.

  The voice whined again, like a pup caught up by the scruff of its neck, as Pocahontas rose from her bed. This time the sound was just an inarticulate, halfhearted yelping. Pocahontas ducked through the door flap and stretched. Nonoma stood there with fists on her narrow hips, facing the werowance and stamping her foot in the dust. When she saw Japazaws glance suddenly toward Pocahontas, Nonoma spun toward her with wide-eyed surprise.

  “You’re awake!”

  “I suppose the birds chased me from bed,” said Pocahontas wryly.

  Nonoma rushed to her and seized her by the hand. “There’s a ship on the river—an absolutely huge one, not the little shallop the white men usually take about for trading. I want to go see it. Oh, don’t you wish to see it, too, Pocahontas? Don’t you?”

  The only vessel Pocahontas wished to see was the canoe that would carry her back to Orapax. She would be glad to leave Passapatanzy behind, with its shining skin of treachery and its uncomfortable echoes of the luxuries she’d once longed for. But Nonoma peered at her so eagerly, pleading with her eyes and her quivering lip, that Pocahontas felt it would be cruel to flee Passapatanzy that very morning. What could it hurt, after all, to eye an English ship from the safety of the shore? The tassantassas were clearly on good terms with Japazaws, and even they would not dare to harm the wife of their pet chief. She realized the white men probably knew Nonoma by sight. It would be safe enough.

  “Maybe,” she said, squeezing Nonoma’s hand. “But it’s only first light. Let’s bathe, and if the ship is still there, perhaps we can look from the shore. If you approve, werowance,” she added hastily.

  Japazaws shrugged. “It is time to bathe, indeed. When I am clean and proper, then perhaps I will feel like indulging you, wife. Perhaps I will even accompany you myself
.”

  They made their way to the women’s bathing place, Nonoma skipping along the trail. She chattered like a blackbird in a marsh as they left their aprons on the grassy shore and waded waist deep. Pocahontas nodded and murmured in response without hearing any of Nonoma’s words. She immersed herself chin deep, and then ducked beneath the surface completely. But when she rose up again, a strange veil seemed to hang over the world, obscuring her senses, wreathing her in a smoke of dull confusion. The veil numbed her skin, so that the bracing chill of the river hardly raised its usual prickles on her arms. An English word floated through her thoughts. Morning. Or perhaps it was the other word: the one that meant sorrow.

  A breeze parted the long reeds that shielded the cove. She peered through the swaying cloak of grasses, staring downstream as if she might see the ship from here—see it, and be free to turn her back on Passapatanzy and its strange, treacherous werowance. Return to Orapax, to Kocoum, to her home.

  But the ship was not so close; the river was empty. It stretched away between the green walls of the forest, until the wind died away and the curtain grasses closed together, and Pocahontas could see nothing more.

  “Come,” Pocahontas said with sudden resolve. “Let’s find this ship.” So I can leave this place and never return.

  The ship, when at last they found it, was indeed grand, even if it belonged to the tassantassas. Secured by a heavy chain, it rested midstream where the river was wide and deep. Near the water’s edge, a little landing boat lay just above the tide line.

  Anchor. She remembered the word, remembered Chawnzmit repeating it so she could hear the subtle nuances of sound. Other words came back to her in a hot rush, tumbling through her head like stones in a streambed. Sail. Mast. Sailor.

  Nonoma scuttled from their hidden trail onto the shore. The woman was completely without fear of the tassantassas, oblivious to the danger like an infant reaching for a hot coal. Pocahontas hung back, crouching instinctively behind the cover of a low thicket. But Japazaws followed his wife out onto the bank with a confident, swaggering step, and Pocahontas, left unprotected in the forest, swallowed hard. Her throat was dry as a fireside stone. She slunk from cover like a shy deer.

  “Oh,” Nonoma sighed. “Isn’t it lovely, with the sun shining on that folded white wing? What is it called, husband? You know the words, do you not?”

  Japazaws made a great show of forgetfulness, tapping at his shaven scalp as if he might dislodge the answer by force.

  “Sail,” Pocahontas croaked. “It’s called a sail.”

  “It’s very bright.”

  “The things are quite large when they are unfolded,” Japazaws said, “those sails. A sight to behold. They fill with wind and grow tight as a drumhead, and then the boat speeds upriver—even against the current—as quick as a wolf running.”

  A sudden rustle sounded in the woods; Pocahontas jumped and spun. A white man appeared on the trail they had just vacated. The man paused in apparent surprise, and then held his hands out slowly, as if to reassure them that he held no gun.

  Pocahontas stepped back quickly and collided with Nonoma’s chest; the girl hooked her arm through Pocahontas’s and grinned. “Don’t run, you dim little fish! It’s only Argall. He won’t hurt you.”

  The tassantassa bobbed his head and muttered a few words as he made his way slowly down to the shoreline. His pale hands were still outstretched. They contrasted brightly against his dark wool sleeves and tunic. His face was round and shiny, with a high forehead and ashy, backswept hair. His thick beard was cut blunt, straight across, with two pointed corners. It had the look of a half-filled carrying bag lying on his chest. Below a long, straight nose, his mouth twisted as he mumbled. Pocahontas could not tell whether he spoke to her or to Japazaws—or to himself. His words were quiet and low, like a hunter soothing a flighty dog. Argall’s eyes watched Pocahontas with piercing avidity. Those eyes unsettled her most of all, with their unblinking wideness and pale hunger.

  Japazaws greeted the man in accented English. “Good day, Captain Argall.”

  “Japazaws, my friend.”

  Pocahontas clutched at her fluttering stomach. She was astounded by how quickly the words came back to her. She had not spoken English, or even thought of it, since the disaster of the coach and three horses. Yet the words had not left her.

  “It is good to see you here,” the white captain said. “You and your lovely wife.”

  He took Nonoma’s hand and raised it to his lips. Pocahontas’s eyes narrowed. Was this man one who had raped the wife of Wowinchopunck? Had he shot the little boys as they swam in panic and terror for the shore?

  He turned to Pocahontas with a half bow. “And who is this dark beauty?”

  “Pocahontas,” Japazaws said. His voice rose in pitch, ringing with a queer emphasis. “The favorite daughter of Powhatan. She has come to visit my wife, who is her sister.”

  “How lovely, how lovely,” Argall said, glancing between Pocahontas and the little landing boat that waited on the strand. “Japazaws, because you have been a good friend to me, won’t you please join me on my ship for a feast? I would celebrate our friendship with good food and rich drink, and perhaps we will trade.”

  Japazaws translated the invitation to Nonoma, and the young woman’s eyes lit up. She clutched harder at Pocahontas’s arm and shivered, stifling a girlish squeal. “Oh, we must go aboard, husband—when will I ever have the chance again?”

  The werowance thumbed his chin, considering. “It is a rare opportunity; that is true. Yet I have heard sad tales of women who were ill-used on these tassantassa ships. I would not risk your safety, Musqua-chehip.”

  “Pocahontas knows the tassantassa ways. And they used to revere her. All the white men adored her!” Nonoma said. “I am sure they remember her still, and will treat her with great honor. No harm can befall me if Pocahontas goes with us.”

  “I won’t go,” Pocahontas said quickly. She shook off Nonoma’s arm and staggered away. Argall tensed, and she turned her face abruptly away from him in scorn. “No,” she said in English.

  Nonoma wailed. “Pocahontas, why not? It’s as safe as can be! And, oh, think of all the wonderful, exotic things we might see! I’ll never have a chance again to board a tassantassa ship . . . never!” Tears spilled down her cheeks. “I thought you’d learned to be more kind and generous, but I see you’re still the haughty girl who spat on my face when I was frightened and alone!”

  Pocahontas flushed with mortification. She felt so hot that she pressed her cool palms against her cheeks. Perhaps Nonoma is right, after all. Surely the English still remember me, and with Japazaws aboard they would never dare to harm us. I’m being foolish. The sooner Nonoma’s whims are satisfied, the sooner I can return to Orapax.

  She took Nonoma’s hand. “Very well. I’m sorry—please stop crying. I will go aboard with you, so long as we stay close to your husband.”

  Like the sun parting a bank of thunderheads, Nonoma’s face lit with a triumphant smile. “Oh! Pocahontas, I promise you, this will be a day neither of us will ever forget.”

  Argall rowed them slowly from the shore toward the dark hulk anchored midstream. Pocahontas watched with growing apprehension as the ship loomed larger. As the oars splashed and Nonoma vibrated with excitement, as Japazaws conversed with the captain in low tones, speaking of trade, Pocahontas strained to catch the English words. But Nonoma chittered like a squirrel in her ear, and Real Tongue and tassantassa speech rolled into one hopeless tangle.

  The rowboat turned, drifting toward the great wooden carapace of the ship, sucked against its mass like a twig pulled into the swirling wake of a fast canoe. Pale faces peered down from the rail above; their ruddy cheeks and sharp noses, and their hair of strange, earthy colors stood out boldly against the morning sky. One lowered a climbing device made of thin, even planks of wood, tied at regular intervals along two parallel lengths
of cord. Rope. Pocahontas recalled the proper word for the thick, rough cord as she climbed unsteadily from the rowboat. Ladder.

  In spite of her queasy fear, she could not help a gasp of admiration when she stood on the ship’s deck, clutching the smooth, polished rail in white-knuckled hands. It seemed she could see nearly all of Tsenacomoco from this height. A short distance upstream, the haze of Passapatanzy’s cook fires hung above the treetops. Here and there she could make out the arch of a longhouse or the tall, thin posts of the crow towers in the fields. The river wended north and east, a long stripe of silver green edged by the rich deep cliffs of forest. Behind, toward the sea, she could see from her lofty vantage how the river widened, opening into the languid, salty regions of the Tidewater.

  A few of the white men bowed to her, and among their murmured greetings she thought she heard her name, and a whisper of “princess.” So Nonoma was right. They did recall her—some of them—and would treat her kindly. She smiled at them, cursing her lips for their trembling.

  Japazaws reached the deck and turned to help Nonoma aboard. She squealed and clapped when she stood to her full height, and twined her arm through Pocahontas’s.

  “It is lovely. I knew it would be. Aren’t you glad you came? Look, see all the strange things the tassantassas have!” Nonoma set to inspecting the riggings of the ship, fingering the heavy ropes and the round wooden devices around which they were coiled.

  Argall called for a table, the raised eating platform Pocahontas remembered from Jamestown. One was set on the aft deck, as the square-bearded captain called the rear portion of the ship, so that they might enjoy the sweeping view as they ate. Pocahontas found the chairs uncomfortable. If she could not sit properly on a mat on the ground, she would rather have stood to eat from the table. But she did her best to remain still throughout the meal, although her bottom ached and her legs felt strange, stuck out in front of her and bent like a hard-drawn bow.