Tidewater: A Novel of Pocahontas and the Jamestown Colony

by Libbie Hawker

  Self-conscious, the man pulled the hat onto his knee. “Good day. You are the princess Pocahontas?”

  It was an absurd question, for who else in Jamestown had the rich copper-earth skin of a Real Person? What other woman roamed the village wearing nothing but the scandal of a linen shift? But the man seemed nervous as a shorebird. She did not wish to frighten him with her usual haughty anger. She was tired of frightening people, tired of glaring her hatred at Jamestown, its people and its palisade walls. She was only weary now—weary and alone.

  “I am Pocahontas.”

  “Reverend Whitaker has asked that I teach you to read. My name is John Rolfe.”

  As Pocahontas took to her lessons, the weeks sped by, full of new work and new words. Summer passed its peak and coasted toward less stifling days, smooth and easy like a canoe drifting downriver. Autumn gathered silently, as though it had been waiting at the edges of the marsh beyond the walls of Jamestown. Pocahontas filled her hours with the cool quiet of the chapel, the shaft of golden light that fell through its narrow window onto the knife-graven desk, and the peaceful, gentle ways of her tutor, John Rolfe.

  At first she hated him, just as she hated all the English, save for Mary. He was a part of Jamestown, and therefore complicit in her captivity. Her disdain for him simmered just beneath her weariness. Often it boiled over, when his lessons taxed her mind and the marks on the pages seemed to blur together in a meaningless black streak, and she raged at him. At times, when she felt too keenly her own ignorance of English words and ways, she mocked him.

  But John bore her outbursts and her mockery with patient understanding, and before the summer had come to a close, her forbidding airs melted away like a snowflake on warm skin. At first she had welcomed the daily lessons for the break they provided in the monotony of her captivity. But soon she’d begun to look forward to John’s slender finger sliding along the page, his quiet voice guiding her, and she greeted him with an eager smile.

  Now and then Reverend Whitaker would join them in the chapel, poring over his sheaf of record papers and scratching at them with a long plume. The reverend would look up from his papers occasionally and appraise Pocahontas’s progress. When she caught his eye upon her, she would blush and watch John’s finger tracing the page, but not before she saw a beam of pride and affection light the reverend’s face.

  Usually Pocahontas and John read alone. Her voice filled the chapel with hesitant sounds as she stumbled over a syllable that was sharp and hard as stone, and John, patient and soft, corrected her. In those moments she would pause to hear the faint echo of their voices fading together from the empty church. Then she would try the word once more. When she was correct, John would nod, his eyes shining.

  One afternoon, in the warm, angling light of the month John called September, Pocahontas felt a hollow growl of impatience in her middle. It was nearly suppertime, and she craved a bowl of Mary’s rabbit stew. But this restlessness was more than just hunger. In all her reading, her careful poring over the Holy Book of the white God, she had found no spell or song to release her from Jamestown.

  John turned a page, laid his finger at the start of a new verse. But Pocahontas shook her head.

  “I don’t want to read that one.”

  “This verse, then,” John suggested, touching another.

  “No.”

  “Then which will you read?”

  “None!”

  John sat back calmly, bracing for another of her storms.

  But she did not rage. She only stared at him, wide-eyed, hoping he could read the want of her spirit. She dared not speak her desire aloud, for fear he would tell her that there was no verse to set her free, no magic in this book that could end her captivity.

  “Well, then,” John suggested placidly, “open to any page you please, and read to me the first verse you see.”

  Pocahontas jerked her chin into the air, as if he had thrown out a challenge he did not believe she could meet. She lifted a large, thick bundle of pages and flipped them over.

  “‘And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that He which made them at the beginning made them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.’”

  A cold knife stabbed deep into her spirit. She had not thought about Kocoum all summer long—had forced the memory of him from her mind. If it had remained, she would have spent all her days weeping, and Pocahontas had vowed not to weep before the eyes of her captors again. But now, as she heard the words spilling from her own mouth, the image of her husband returned with brutal force. She recalled him bending to set the bag of food into his canoe the last time she had seen him. She wondered if he had found the sweet dumplings she’d hidden for him inside.

  Pocahontas pressed both hands to her hollow stomach. She folded, bending around the ache like a cornstalk breaking, until her forehead fell upon the open page.

  John’s voice was wavering and distant, a cry underwater. “Pocahontas?”

  “Oh!” The sorrow, long stoppered and buried, burst from her spirit in that single, painful word.

  John’s hand took her shoulder and gently pulled her upright. She rocked on the rough, hard bench, mouth twisted with silent weeping.

  “You have lost someone you loved,” John said.

  She did not answer. She hid the tears behind her hands.

  “I know how you feel,” he told her.

  “You cannot know! You are just as cruel as the rest of them, feigning friendship while you tear my life apart. You are only another wolf in the pack, John Rolfe.”

  “My friendship is not feigned, Pocahontas. I know what it is like to feel your life torn apart. May I tell you a story? It is a sad story, but I should like for you to hear it.”

  She turned her face away from him.

  He took her scorn for permission. “Four years ago, I set sail from England with my wife, Sarah, and many other people. There were more than one hundred of us packed onto a small ship called the Sea Venture, all with hope in our hearts that we might settle the New World, by the grace of God. None on that voyage was more hopeful than Sarah. She brimmed over with optimism and light. She cheered everyone on board—led the women in singing, played games with the little children. Sarah raised all our spirits, though the ship was cramped and the going difficult. She even loved the sea. She laughed and whooped when the waves were rough, as if she were riding a tame pony.

  “Sarah discovered early in the voyage that”—John glanced at Pocahontas, and his face colored—“that she was soon to become a mother. We were both full of joy, as you can imagine. Each night as we huddled together on our narrow bed, we whispered of our precious hope. She looked like an angel in those moments. I swear she glowed in the darkness belowdecks, with that dear life sleeping inside her.

  “As we approached the islands to take on fresh water, the ship encountered foul weather. The storm was terrible—even Sarah found no amusement in it. We all of us hid in the stifling darkness, listening to the waves pound our little ship. The sea thrashed us about. We could hardly lay flat, and were thrown about the hold. All was screaming and terror, and terrible smells, and Sarah clinging to me with her little hands in the darkness.

  “In time, the captain sent a man down to tell us to brace, that he had no choice but to run the Sea Venture aground on the rocks. If all went as planned, we would take the landing boats and row for a nearby shore. Everyone was terrified—even I. There is no shame in admitting it. But Sarah put the place in order, moving about the hold with a soft word and a gentle touch. She rallied our courage, got every person braced tight in no time, packed together and wedged between barrels and crates like straw in a tick.

  “And then the impact. Oh, how can I tell you
of the noise? The tearing, the rending of the wood . . . the scream of nails and planks and people, and the cold sea roaring on the rocks. But we made it from our hold to the deck, and with Sarah and the captain keeping order, boatload by boatload we made our way ashore.”

  Her resolve to remain aloof crumbled. Pocahontas was watching John Rolfe intently now, caught up by the fear and wonder of the story. “Were any killed?”

  “No,” he said gruffly. “By the grace of God, all hundred and fifty souls aboard made it safely to land.” He gave a short, sharp laugh. “Even the ship’s dog was saved.”

  John stared into the depths of the chapel. His eyes, stricken and bleak, rested on the cross. After a moment he went on. “We knew it would be some months before we could expect another English ship to approach the islands and rescue us. With Sarah setting the example, we went about the business of constructing our own small colony there in the tropics. We salvaged wood from the wreck of the Sea Venture, and supplies, too. Life was not simple, of course. The clime was harsh and the naturals of that land were exceedingly dangerous if not approached with great care. But we managed, and even found some happiness in the closeness of our community.

  “In time, Sarah . . . well, her day to bear the child was at hand. You cannot imagine how I fretted and paced and begged God to be merciful, for we had no physician, and only three women of our number had ever birthed babes before.” John’s face colored again, as hot and bright as puccoon. “I . . . I apologize for speaking of such indelicate . . .”

  Pocahontas tossed her head impatiently. The English fear of a woman’s magic was even more extreme than any Real Man’s. “It makes no matter. Please, go on.”

  “Sarah came through the ordeal well enough—or so I thought that first night. They laid the baby at her breast—a girl, perfect and whole, and beautiful as a star. I loved the child the moment I saw her. I knew God had blessed me, had blessed us both, for Sarah seemed happy and strong.

  “But the women gathered around her, waiting for something. I could tell they were anxious. I don’t . . . I don’t know precisely what the matter was. Something was . . . some part of the process was not complete. The women would not tell me what they were waiting for, but as they continued to wait they grew ever more worried. They would not let the babe sleep, but insisted Sarah put her to the breast, thinking to encourage some . . . some function or other. Sarah was as weary as the babe. Soon she could no longer keep her eyes open, and the women grew more frantic.

  “I thought at first that they were being ignorant or superstitious, for Sarah’s color and breathing were good, and she smiled as she slept. But when she woke hours later, she was in the grips of a terrible fever.”

  The afterbirth. Pocahontas had seen few babes come into the world, but even she knew the danger to a woman if part of the afterbirth was retained. The right herbs and spells—and a newborn’s suckling—could make a woman’s womb contract and rid itself of any scraps. But if that potent magic was left behind, it could fill the body with warring spirits. Many women did not survive such an ordeal. No wonder the white women did not tell John the truth of it. Afterbirth was blood magic in its purest, most intense form—nothing for a man to meddle with, especially not a fearful new father.

  “They did not have the right herbs,” Pocahontas ventured.

  “No. We knew so little of the islands. If any medicine grew there that might have helped my wife, none of us knew what it looked like or where to find it.

  “She lingered for two days before God finally took her. The babe lasted only a few hours more.” John lapsed into silence again. His face was gaunt with pain, both fresh and remembered. “Before Sarah died, we decided together that we would call our daughter Bermuda, after the island where we found ourselves. It seems an especially fitting name now, for I buried them both on that island, and left my heart in the ground beside them. Bermuda is my whole world, and I shall never see it—or my wife and child—again.”

  When the story ended, Pocahontas could not meet John Rolfe’s eye. Shame pulsed through her—shame for having assumed a man such as he could feel nothing, and shame at having unearthed his painful memories. Another emotion twisted about that bare framework of shame, shrouding it like a passion-fruit vine. It was kinship. John Rolfe did indeed know what it was like to lose a beloved partner, to have one’s world torn way. He even knew the pain of losing a child—a loss Pocahontas felt keenly, mourning as she did for the children she would never bear at Kocoum’s hearth.

  John sighed. He slumped on his bench, staring at the open Bible between them. Behind him, the shaft of golden light fell through the chapel’s small window. Motes moved in a swaying, swirling dance like women dusted in mica, unaware of the private sorrow John and Pocahontas shared. His hand moved of its own accord and turned the Bible’s page, hiding the painful verse from sight. But he did not read on, and neither did she.

  Pocahontas’s hands twitched in her lap. She twisted her fingers together, recalling John Smith’s admonition that white men were dangerous and would only cause her pain. But what pain could be worse than this terrible loss, the pain only John Rolfe understood?

  She unclasped her fingers and reached across the Bible. Gently, Pocahontas took John’s hand in her own.

  From the pinnacle of the watchtower, Pocahontas stared out from Jamestown’s wall across the marshland, pale and brittle beneath the climbing moon, to the dense black palisade of the forest. The moon was deep ochre, hanging heavy in the sky. It tipped the canopy of the forest with a pale-golden glow.

  It was the final moon of taquitock. Somewhere, far upriver at Orapax, a ring of torches was gathering in the wood, drawing tight like the strings of a leather bag. In the center of the ring of light, already knowing they were lost, already feeling the arrows that would pierce them, the deer lifted cloven feet of obsidian and swiveled ears as broad as cupped hands—a last delicate dance in this world before they fell where the ground was dark and cold, and their spirits lifted like white smoke to leap through the forest of the night sky.

  Somewhere, in Orapax or in Pamunkey, in Paspahegh or Werowocomoco—somewhere, everywhere, in all the territories of the Real People, Kocoum drifted like a ghost, searching for her. She imagined the spirits of Sarah and Bermuda, John Rolfe’s dead family, trailing Kocoum and weeping, their hands clutching for the mantle of flesh he still wore. He was warm. His feet stirred the earth’s blanket of dead leaves as he searched. Theirs did not. The baby girl had copper skin and black hair. Sarah’s face was a dry, featureless smear of ash.

  The steep, narrow stairway creaked. Pocahontas glanced around without interest. Another man climbed up to join the two others who waited at a respectful distance on the lookout’s platform. She was accompanied everywhere she went in Jamestown, but on the watchtowers especially. She supposed the English thought she would throw herself off the wall, and both Captain Argall and Lord De La Warr wanted her unharmed. But there was no longer any chance of that. She was beyond despair. She had settled into a mood of perpetual contemplation.

  It was not just any man who ascended the steps. The Reverend Whitaker rose onto the platform and nodded a silent greeting. He looked at her quizzically, inquiring without words whether he was intruding.

  Pocahontas turned back to her view. After a moment, the reverend dismissed the men who watched over her with a quiet word and then joined her, his uncallused hands folded on the wall beside her own.

  “A picturesque evening, though it must be cold for a woman dressed only in her shift.”

  Pocahontas said nothing.

  “It will be winter soon enough, child.”

  She nodded.

  “You take yourself up to this watchtower often. I wonder at your thoughts when you are here.”

  She turned to him with some amusement. “Do you mean you wonder whether I will fling myself from the wall? I will not. You may set your mind at ease, Reverend.”

&n
bsp; He smiled. “That is good to hear, but that was not what I wondered. No, Pocahontas—I sincerely wonder what worries plague you. Perhaps I might help.”

  “Not worries—not often, at any rate. I come here for memories.”

  “Ah.”

  The reverend was silent, allowing her the comfort of memory. She would have preferred that silence, yet some unknown force goaded her to speak.

  “It is the last moon of taquitock—the season of the turning leaf.”

  “Autumn,” said the reverend.

  Pocahontas insisted. “Taquitock. Tonight is the last night of the hunt. My people are gathered at the hunting camps. The deer carcasses have been carved—all but the last, which will fall tonight. The meat is smoking. The hides are rolled and tied for carrying home, for scraping and tanning. There is so much work to be done.”

  “And you are here.”

  “Yes.”

  Silence again. She dipped into it as she had so often dipped into the river, bathing at each sunrise no matter what the season, in spite of the cold. The moon slid golden over the violet trees.

  “Tell me more about the hunt,” the reverend said.

  She smiled. “There is dancing every night. Not the regular kind—wild dancing, happy dancing. I miss it. I don’t seem to know who I am without dancing and songs, without the chants and rituals.”

  That seemed to trouble him. A slight frown creased his face, but he did not elaborate on his displeasure. “You may not know who you are, but God knows you, child.”

  She shrugged. “So you say. But I have never seen your god. How can I be sure of him?”

  The reverend glanced at her in surprise. “You have seen your old god?”

  “He is not my old god, and he is called the Okeus. And yes, Reverend, I have seen him.” She recalled with a shudder the Okeus’s fearful grimace, the white eyes staring out from the flames as Uttamussak burned. And she did not know whether it was the god that frightened her, or the fire. “You must be a great priest indeed, Reverend Whitaker, if you are able to see this god of yours.”