Tidewater: A Novel of Pocahontas and the Jamestown Colony

by Libbie Hawker

  John eyed her with concern. “Are you well?”

  “Tired,” she said faintly. “Only tired.”

  “I’ll call for the coach, then.”

  As they stood to take their leave, Pocahontas’s eye lighted on a mask that had been discarded by one of the actors. It had the shape of a bird’s face, beaked and feathered. It leered up at her with piercing, mocking eyes. No natural bird looked that way—no bird of Tsenacomoco. She watched it warily for a moment, as if it might spring from the stage, crying with the voice of a thousand crows. The mask did not move, of course, but her skin prickled with apprehension.

  She lifted her skirts and hurried after her husband.

  Pocahontas’s head nodded as the coach made its way back to Lord Markley’s estate. She could not lean against John’s shoulder and sleep—not with the wide lace collar about her neck nor with her hair heaped beneath the tall white hat. But all the way through the quiet blackness of the Southwark night, Pocahontas’s spirit hovered in an uneasy half dream.

  The brazen figures from the masque crowded around her, gripping her with hard hands so that she could not pull away. She looked into their faces. She stared beyond masks of feather and fur, of glittering gems and golden braid. The eyes that stared back at her were sunken and sharp like the eyes of King James. In the black pupil of each, she saw a flicker of red fire, and she remembered the Okeus burning.

  At the estate, the doorman rushed to the steps to intercept them.

  “Please, Master Rolfe, begging your pardon. You have—that is, the Lady Rebecca has—a visitor.”

  John and Pocahontas stared at one another.

  “A visitor?” John said. “What do you mean?”

  “He waits in the drawing room, sir. He only just arrived, moments before you.”

  Pocahontas seized her skirts, willing her weary feet to rush up the stairs.

  “Here, Rebecca,” John called after her. “Wait!”

  But she swept into the drawing room before her husband could stop her.

  There he stood in the spilling light of the fireplace, already half turned toward the drawing room door, as if he’d expected her to be there. Gone were the old woolens, the mail shirt that smelled of rust and oil. He wore a fine coat now, with slashed sleeves and bright embroidery, and well-tailored breeches tucked into boots that reflected the fire’s flicker and dance from their burnished surface. The hair and beard were the same, thick and golden. He had tamed them somewhat, neatened them with scissor and comb.

  John Smith clasped his hands behind his back and smiled at her. It was a timid smile—an expression she had never before seen on that bold, haughty face.

  “Wingapoh, Pocahontas.”

  The sound of the name raised a hard lump in her throat. She turned away from him abruptly, all the words chased from her mind, both English and Real.

  “I . . . I am happy to see you looking so well,” Smith ventured.

  She shook her head and would not meet his gaze. She felt as though the beings in their masks crowded around her, reaching out from the firelight, striving to pull her into the flames. She planted her feet to the drawing room carpet and went on shaking her head, silent and resisting.

  John Rolfe eased himself into the room. He glanced from Pocahontas to Smith, and then extended his hand to the visitor. “Come, friend. Let us give her some time. She will speak when she has found the words.”

  When her husband had shut the door softly and Pocahontas was alone with the firelight, she clawed at the collar around her neck. The wires bent and she tore it free, hurling it onto a nearby table. She found the steel hatpin with trembling fingers and tugged it away. A dozen ebony hairpins followed. They clicked against the table when she dropped them. She worried at the knots of her lacings until her bodice loosened, and she sank onto an ivory-colored settee, gasping and raking her hair with her fingers until it hung straight once more, draping over the red brocade of her gown.

  For a long while, Pocahontas held herself apart from all thought and all emotion. She was as stunned as a rabbit in torchlight, glassy-eyed and staring, conscious of nothing but her beating heart. Then, slowly, tentatively, she examined the vision again of Smith standing beside the fire, waiting for her to arrive, knowing she would soon be there. Was it truly his face, or just another false mask? Were those his eyes that looked at her, or was it the piercing stare of King James, with the smoke of Uttamussak darkening his gaze?

  Your new mamanatowick, your king. She raked her hands through her hair again, pulling it, and felt a silent cry tear at her throat.

  When she had finally composed herself, her mind flooded with words. Her tongue burned to speak them.

  She found the two men in the parlor. A fire blazed in its hearth, and they conversed over cups of wine. Both looked strained and weary. Their conversation ceased when her red skirts filled the parlor doorway. The wine cups returned to the table with unison clinks.

  “The two of you have much to discuss,” her husband said, rising from his chair. “I’ll leave you.” He paused a moment to squeeze her hand as he left.

  The fire crackled in the silence.

  “What am I to make of you, standing here in my parlor?” she said at last. Her voice shook, but she did not care.

  “Pocahontas . . .”

  “They told me you were dead. The men at the fort . . . at Jamestown.”

  “They believed it was so. I nearly believed it myself. I was badly injured, and they sent me back to England to die.”

  Her face began to crumple as she fought back the tears. “Are you here? Or are you some vision from the masque? I cannot tell the difference anymore—what is real and what is not.”

  “I’m here. Little Sister, I’m here.” He stepped toward her with his hands out, as if she might grasp them to verify his reality.

  But Pocahontas stepped back. “It seems I cannot be sure. Nothing is certain anymore. My father sent me to England to learn the truth of your people—whatever truth I could find on my own, for none of us can trust what an Englishman says.”

  “And what did you learn?” Smith asked gently.

  Pocahontas drew a long, careful breath. It felt good, to breathe so deeply with the laces of her bodice hanging loose like a buckskin fringe. “That there are too many of you.”

  Smith lowered his eyes. A ripple of shame obscured his features, as if she were looking at him through a drifting veil of smoke.

  She tossed her head. “So it was you. You at the masque—I thought I saw you. And you all along: the gifts, the fine carriage, this estate . . .”

  “Yes.”

  “You once called Powhatan father, when you were the stranger in my land. And now you care for me as if I am your child. Shall I also call you father, then?”

  “Please,” he said, “don’t be angry. I meant no insult by it. It only seemed the right thing to do.”

  “Right in what way?”

  “After I returned to England, I wrote of my experiences with the Real People . . . with you. The book was published. I’m afraid it made me something of a celebrity. When I learned you were in England, it seemed only just to share my wealth with you, in whatever way I could.”

  “So it was you after all, who wrote the book. Your book is the talk of all London, but I refused to believe it could truly have been you who wrote it.”

  “I have heard,” Smith said, grinning sheepishly, “that you have been the most sought-after guest at every affair in London.”

  “Oh, yes.” She laughed bitterly. “It seems I fit right in. I may as well delight my gracious hosts and become their countryman—swear my allegiance to King James.” She stared into the fire.

  “Are you truly considering it?” Smith said after a pause.

  When she looked up at him, hot tears broke and streaked down her face.

  Smith’s eyes went dull with sudden,
stunned pain. His mouth opened as if he might speak, but he held his peace.

  Then he took up a small velvet pouch that hung from his belt. He reached inside. A necklace of white beads rose from the bag like the first smoke of a newly kindled fire, delicate and pale. Smith placed the beads in her hand.

  Pocahontas lifted them to the firelight and let the smooth, cool beads slide one by one through her fingers. She noted the red yarn they were strung on, and her breath caught in her throat. She looked up at Smith with a sudden, hot rush of gratitude.

  When they said their awkward farewells, Pocahontas knew—in the same way she’d known it about Kocoum—that she would never see John Smith again. She wandered the sleeping halls of the estate, pressing the old, worn bead necklace between her fingers, until she found her husband. John had left the double doors to the garden open wide. A wisp of snow curled into the house, stirred by a nighttime breeze. John stood among the blue-gray pathways, his doublet cast away, the simple white linen of his shirt stark and bright against the black lines of the hedges.

  Pocahontas went to him, twining the beads around her fingers as she walked. They were cool as the river in the morning when it rose to the level of her heart. They were as white and hard as the bones of a werowance, laid in the silence of the temple.

  John looked at her expectantly.

  “I have decided,” she said, and wrapped her arms around his warmth.

  POCAHONTAS

  March 1617

  The weather was not fair enough for sailing until many weeks later, and, when it cleared, the illness that had crept through London’s streets and gutters, through its theaters and fine houses, had laid a strong hold on the city. Even isolated as they were in Southwark, on their borrowed estate, the Rolfe household did not escape the flux.

  First Matachanna fell ill, then little Thomas. Pocahontas cared for them both devotedly, and joined with Utta-ma-tomakkin to sing the chants that would drive the demons of illness from their bodies.

  She feared for them, especially for the boy, who was so tiny and pale in his sickbed. She had heard rumors that the flux sometimes brought on a fever, and that children who managed to survive the terrible purging of the flux were nonetheless struck blind by the heat of their own suffering bodies. But the sound of Utta-ma-tomakkin’s rattle kept up her courage, and the scent of holy tobacco smoke comforted her with its biting sting.

  The spirits were merciful. Thomas rebounded from the illness as bright-eyed and full of questions as he had always been, and, several days later, Matachanna felt well enough to walk in the weak sunshine of the garden.

  “Compared to crossing the sea,” she said, laying a hand to one still-pale cheek with trepidation, “the flux was like dancing at a harvest festival. Are you sure you don’t want to stay in London, Pocahontas?”

  Pocahontas squeezed her sister’s hand. “If you feel well enough to tease me, then we are certainly going home.”

  “I’m glad of it. Even if it means crossing the sea once more. Even if . . .”

  Matachanna did not finish her thought, but she had no need to speak on. Pocahontas knew what her sister would say. Even if there is nothing left.

  On a fine, blue spring day, they boarded a small ship called the George. Pocahontas watched London drift away as the ship rode the Thames’s current out to sea. Her heart was light, and as she watched Thomas chase the gulls along the ship’s rail, her spirit sang a soft, hopeful song of homecoming.

  But before they had left English waters, a shivering weakness crept into her bones, and her bowels cramped with every step she took and every lurch of the George against the waves. When she refused to climb the ladder and rest on the deck where the air was fresh and the seabirds screamed, John asked the captain to turn the George back toward land.

  They found harbor at the village of Gravesend. John located a house that was happy to board the Virginia princess and her retinue, then Utta-ma-tomakkin carried her to her bed. As she looked up from his strong arms, the priest’s face was hard with concern. She spoke to him, telling him not to fear, that she would see Tsenacomoco soon—they would all see it soon, and the forest would be full of longhouses, as round as ripe fruit, and the smoke would hang above the treetops, and the canoes would move like lovers in the night, their torches shining double on the water—you’ll see, Utta-ma-tomakkin, you’ll see. But her words sounded like a sigh, and the priest’s eyes were distant, staring among the spirits as they always did.

  Pocahontas could feel the spirits. They moved about her, flashing as they passed, like silver fish turning on the surface of the river.

  The bed where they laid her was broad and soft. It was made of lashed saplings, piled high with mats as warm and plush as rabbit fur. She turned to Matachanna, to ask her how she had made such a fine bed in an English house, but Matachanna’s face was wet with tears, and she only shook her head and clutched Pocahontas’s hand. She would not answer.

  John was there, holding her hand whenever Matachanna dropped it, pressing the backs of her cold fingers to his forehead. She brushed back his dark hair and felt soil against his skin. His smell was tobacco and earth and the sweat of a day’s labor. His smell was the bed they shared at Henrico, the mingled scent of their two bodies, the flesh that had made their son.

  Matachanna bent over her and kissed her forehead. Oh, Pocahontas said, startled at the weakness of her voice, you’ve made a mess of my yellow paint.

  She did not know how much time passed. Days, perhaps, or hours, while she sank into the depth of the sleeping mats and the longhouse settled on its frame. The umber shadows soothed her, surrounding her with the odors of pine smoke and drying herbs and the musty, feral scent of furs.

  Utta-ma-tomakkin’s rattle shook like rain above her head. It spoke like thunder in a dream, hollow and rolling. The rattle and the chants never ceased—until they finally did, and the priest fell onto a high-backed chair with his head in his hands.

  Get up, Matachanna said, her voice high and distant, the voice of a girl who has not yet entered the sweat lodge. You’re sleeping, and there is work to be done.

  Pocahontas rose up. Someone had painted her arms and chest with puccoon. The paint seemed to lift her, driving the weakness from her limbs—the paint, and the incense of tobacco, which filled the air, pungent and rich.

  There is work to be done.

  Yes. There was work to be done—there were words welling in her spirit, clamoring on her tongue.

  She looked around the room. John was bent and weeping over the frail brown hand still clutched against his forehead. Matachanna rocked, head back, her mouth open in a cry of pain Pocahontas could not hear. The priest was slumped and spent. At his feet lay a long stick carved all about with notches, an uncountable number incised into the pale flesh of the wood.

  Pocahontas moved past them. She felt the cool dry whiteness of clay dust on her face. In the bright light of the garden, the hedges were alive with the shiver and flash of spirits. They danced in a thousand colors; they whispered together like a forest in the wind.

  Thomas played in the grass, chasing thrushes that waited for him to come, and then sprang into the air and glided farther down the lawn. Thomas—his black hair, his wondering eyes. His skin was the color of earth, of tanned hide, of cornstalks when the season is spent.

  She went to him and lifted the boy in her arms.

  The words that had filled her spirit loosed. They moved like a flock of blackbirds, clamoring, winging, rising to the pinnacle of a bright and vibrant sky.

  My son, she whispered, the Okeus calls to you. Go back to your home.

  For however long it remains, yours is the land of the forest, of the river that rises and falls with the pulsing heart of the sea. Yours is the longhouse, the temple, the face carved on the spirit post.

  For you are one torch in a circle of fire; you are the deer that lifts its feet in the ring.

 
; For you are earth and spirit, ochre and fire. And tidewater is your blood.

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  and Author’s Remarks

  I wrote Tidewater in record time, considering it’s twice the size of my previous books and I was still working at a full-time day job for the first half of the novel’s creation. I started it on March 15, 2014, and finished the final edits (for the self-published edition, at least) and the formatting on July 14 of the same year. From March through May I brought the book to eighty thousand words, and on June 1, I quit my job to write full time. I completed the first draft of Tidewater before the end of June, accumulating another eighty thousand words in twenty-five days of nonstop work, and I sent it off to my editor on June 26.

  How can it be that I could write a novel of this scope with relative ease, but I can’t find a sensible place to start the historical note? When I think about Tidewater—the novel and the history behind it—I feel overwhelmed. Perhaps that is a natural emotion for a person who has just written and revised 160,000 words in 119 days.

  But I think it has less to do with the workload and more to do with my emotional response to this crucial and tragic bit of American history. And so I am not going to try to make this a straightforward historical note full of fact and rationality, as my notes usually are. I feel I can’t talk about this piece of history without some emotional involvement, so I’m giving you a historical note injected with a bit of my personal feelings and something of the story of how Tidewater came to be.

  The idea of writing a novel about Pocahontas first sparked in my brain in 2011. My now husband, then boyfriend, Paul, was deployed to the Middle East, and I was working at a used-book store. I often seized the opportunity to restock the history and biography shelves, as I’d frequently find obscure books on fascinating subjects that filled my head with all kinds of potential novels-to-be and kept my mind off the danger Paul was in—for a while, at least. I unearthed a book about Pocahontas and her family during one such restocking adventure. It was Pocahontas, Powhatan, Opechancanough: Three Indian Lives Changed by Jamestown, by Helen C. Rountree.