“You probably don’t,” Elizabeth agreed, “but since I am your lady and you are my maid, you’ll have to accept my gift. Take the emerald and buy Robert the bakery he wants. He’s a good man, Bridget. I can think of no two people I’d rather see happy.”
“Ye could come wi’ us,” Sean suggested, “back to Ireland. It’s a fair land, Robert. Not too many Englishmen.”
“Are ye forgettin’ he’s English?” Maureen asked.
“I try to overlook it,” Sean replied with a grin.
“Then you’ll do as we ask?” Elizabeth laid her hand on Sean’s arm. “You’ll let us take your places on the ship?”
“Aye,” Sean said. “We will. The Portsmouth Maid sails in a week with a cargo of indentured servants fer the Virginia Colony. A friend o’ mine, Johnny Dooley, and his sister are sailin’ on it. Methinks they’d help ye out a little if they could. And God go wi’ ye, yer ladyship. Ye’ll need His blessing to make a safe journey wi’out being discovered.”
“Ye’ll have our prayers, m’lady,” Bridget assured her. “I’ll never forget you.” She began to weep again.
“Don’t cry for me,” Elizabeth said as she took hold of Cain’s hand. “I’m leaving nothing behind that I care for except my friends.”
“But it’s a wilderness,” Bridget said. “Full o’ savages and bears.”
Elizabeth squeezed Cain’s hand. “True enough,” she agreed, “but I’ve come to favor savages more and more.”
The Virginia Coast
August 1665
The sailing ship, the Portsmouth Maid, ninety-two days out of Bristol, lay off the Virginia capes waiting for an easterly wind to carry her safely into the Chesapeake Bay. Despite unseasonable calms and a severe storm off Hatteras, the ship had made what her captain considered a fortunate voyage. Only twenty-one of their one hundred and ten passengers had died of illness and misadventure, all but two of those indentured servants.
For days, the captain had waited only a few leagues from land for the prevailing westerlies to change. The August heat was oppressive belowdecks, and he feared that more of the cargo of bondmen and women would sicken and die if they couldn’t reach land soon. In desperation, he had ordered that the servants be allowed up on deck for a few hours to bathe in buckets of sea water and to benefit from the slight movement of air.
Among those who climbed the ladders out of the hold were a small group of Irishmen and women, including a man and wife on the ship’s list as Sean and Maureen Cleary. Maureen Cleary was swelling with child, as were several of the other women servants aboard ship, and her husband was especially protective of her as they came on deck. He paused for a moment by the railing and stared east at the faint line of trees.
“Aye,” a sailor cried. “There’s Virginia Colony o’er there. Pray God we kin ever get t’ it.”
The Irishmen kept away from the English indentured servants. They gathered together in a knot at the stern of the vessel and spoke among themselves in their native Gaelic. The Clearys did not speak at all, but no one appeared to notice, and no one saw the small eelskin bundle that Sean Cleary hid inside a coil of rope.
After a few hours, the captain ordered the indentured servants returned to their quarters belowdecks. The wind was beginning to shift, and he had hopes of making the mouth of the bay before midnight.
Two hours before midnight, Cain and Elizabeth crept silently up the ladder toward the deck. “Are you certain it’s safe to try now?” she whispered.
“No, but it be not safe to wait longer.” He took her arm and helped her the last few steps. “The Irish have hid us aboard ship, but in the English town I would be seen. No man will put irons on Shaakhan Kihittuun again.”
A crescent moon lit the deck in fitful patterns. Clouds hung low over the land, which was too far away for Elizabeth to see in the dark. The air was hot and humid; far off to the south, she heard thunder rumble. “Are you certain you know which way the shore is?” she asked.
Cain held her hand tightly as they made their way to the stern of the ship where he had left the small bundle containing their supplies of fishhooks, needles and thread, and his knife. They halted and stood motionless in the shadows of the mast as a sailor passed by close enough for Elizabeth to smell the rum on his breath.
“I’m afraid,” she admitted.
“Do you want to go back?”
“No.”
“Good.” They reached the coil of rope, and Cain stripped off his clothing and tied the eelskin bundle around his neck. “Now you,” he urged. “Quick.”
Her teeth chattering from fright, Elizabeth unfastened her skirt and stepped out of it. Next came her blouse, her shoes and stockings, and her stays. When she was clad only in a thin linen shift, Cain motioned her to the railing and threw all of their clothing over the side.
“Why?” she whispered.
“We leave no trail for the English captain to follow.” He pulled her into his arms and kissed her. “Hold your breath,” he warned. Then, before she could protest, he lifted her high over the rail and tossed her into the sea.
Elizabeth struck the warm water with a splash and went under. She bobbed up and began to swim as Cain surfaced beside her.
“Be you all right?” he demanded.
“Yes, yes, I’m fine.”
“Then hold my back, and let us swim.” Moonlight shone on his laughing face. “I wish to get the smell of this English ship off my skin forever.”
Elizabeth clung to Cain as he swam with powerful strokes away from the slowly moving ship. She kept glancing back over her shoulder to see if anyone had heard the splashes and discovered their escape, but she saw no sign of any movement other than the sailors at their normal tasks.
Gradually, the ship grew smaller in the distance, and to the east, she could make out a dark line she knew was beach. “I must be mad,” she said to Cain. “I’ve nothing, not even a shoe for my foot or a cradle for our babe.”
He laughed. “The woman who wants little is happier than the one who has much. Be you happy, Eliz-a-beth?”
“Yes.” And she laughed with him. “Very, very happy.”
Cain turned in the water and took her in his arms again. “I will make moccasins for your feet, ki-te-hi, and a cradleboard for our little one to sleep in.”
“But who will chew the hides to make his blanket?”
“That, my keequa, we must bargain over.” He kissed her again, and they turned east toward home and a new beginning.
Epilogue
July 1672
Elizabeth sat on the sand with her bare feet in the cool, foamy surf and watched as Cain speared fish in chest-deep water. Behind her, in the shade of the pine and oak trees, copper-skinned children ran and laughed beside a half dozen summer wigwams. A few feet away, a saucy black-capped tern perched on the bow of Cain’s unfinished dugout and regarded her quizzically.
Up the beach, Elizabeth’s friend, Dame Equiwa, Corn Woman, waded out of the blue-green water with a basket of clams. Wearing only a short woven grass skirt, she paused with the container balanced on her hip and called an affectionate greeting.
Elizabeth smiled and waved. “Good catch.”
“Join us for the evening meal,” Corn Woman shouted. She pushed a heavy wet braid back off her heart-shaped face. “I’ll make berry cakes to go with the clam soup.”
Elizabeth nodded and rose, plunging into the gently swirling water up to her knees. Cain came toward her with a large trout squirming on the end of his fish spear. Drops of sea water sparkled like diamonds against the fish’s iridescent scales.
“Will two be enough?” Cain called.
“What? I can’t hear you?” Elizabeth shaded her eyes against the bright sun with a tanned hand. Her heart thrilled like that of an adolescent girl as she gazed at him, taking in the corded muscles rippling beneath the bronze surface of his skin, the flat, hard belly above the short leather loincloth, the sleek sinewy thighs. He’s my husband, she chided herself mentally. What decent wedded woman gets
butterflies in her stomach whenever she looks at the father of her children?
Yards behind Cain the surf broke, and the waves rushed toward the beach only to ebb and break again. Seagulls wheeled and dove overhead, adding their raucous cries to the voices of the children and the crashing waves.
He waded closer. “Will two fish be enough? This one’s smaller than—” He broke off as Elizabeth turned her attention to the child in the tiny dugout, paddling an arrow’s shot beyond the breakers.
Cain put a comforting arm around Elizabeth’s shoulder. “Have not worry,” he said in English. “Look at her. She’s as much at home in the sea as they are.” He laughed as the fairy-sprite stood, balanced herself gracefully in the child-sized dugout, then flung her lithe, honey-colored body onto the back of a dolphin. The heads and fins of two more dolphins appeared on the far side the dugout—a huge male and an infant.
Elizabeth gasped. No matter how many times she’d seen her daughter ride the female dolphin, Elizabeth had never lost her fear for the child.
“Shhh,” Cain soothed. “Look at her.”
Laughing, the child clung to the dolphin’s dorsal fin as the majestic creature rose out of the water and skittered across the top of the waves. The dolphin gave one final bounce and dove gently. The girl’s head disappeared beneath the water, and Elizabeth’s heart missed a beat. Then her daughter’s dark crown appeared, followed by an ecstatic little face. Her laughter drifted across the water to her proud parents as she swam back to the dugout with sure, effortless strokes.
The larger male dolphin nosed her gently as she climbed back into the boat. Giggling, the child scooped a fish from the bottom of the craft and tossed it to her “rescuer.”
“Mar’ee!” Cain called. He waved to the girl. “Enough play. Time to come in and help your mother.”
“Nukuaa, ” she pleaded. “Please, Father. Just a little while longer. The baby dolphin nearly ate from my hand.”
“Now, Mary!” Elizabeth insisted.
Reluctantly, the child waved a paddle in assent. “All right, I’m coming.”
“You spoil her frightfully,” Elizabeth said to Cain as they returned to the beach. “No English child would dare be so familiar with her father.”
“No child is spoiled by love,” he replied. “Our people have always raised children so. They are a gift of the Maker.” Removing the trout from his long barbed spear, he carefully washed the blood from the haft.
A naked four-year-old boy, Dame Equiwa’s oldest, ran toward them eagerly. “I’ll carry your fish spear, uncle,” he lisped in Algonquian. “I’ll be careful, I promise.”
“In English?” Elizabeth asked. “Can you say it in English?” She had long since given up trying to sort out Cain’s relatives and clan members, and accepted the fact that most of the children of the tribe would call them uncle and aunt out of respect if not blood kinship.
Konueek’s round face twisted with effort. “Me car-ray arrow of fish. Pl-eashe!”
Cain and Elizabeth laughed. “Very good,” Elizabeth said as Cain handed the boy his spear. “Keep the point away from you, and walk—don’t run.”
“Your lessons be having effect,” Cain said as the child trudged manfully ahead of them bearing the long wooden spear like a trophy. “Soon, children of our tribe speak English almost as good as me.”
She cut her eyes to him. “It’s what I love most about you, Cain, your modesty. I hope they learn to speak better than you. Then I’ll teach them all to read and to write. We can’t let Mary and her brother grow up ignorant, can we?”
“You would make Englishmen and women out of them all,” he teased in his own tongue. Other children came to carry the fish to Elizabeth and Cain’s wigwam, and Cain took his wife’s hand and drew her into the shade of a spreading oak. “It is well you teach them. Some people do not want their children to learn strange English ways, but knowledge is good. It makes us strong. The time is coming fast when our way of life will be challenged by the coming of the white man. We must change, or we will be no more.”
Elizabeth looked back toward the beach where her daughter was bringing her dugout through the surf onto the sand. Her hair, as black and glossy as a crow’s wing, hung loose in a silken curtain to her narrow waist. Mary’s petite body was as slim and muscular as a boy’s, her sturdy legs beneath her woven skirt were strong from running and climbing. Her tiny hands were equally skilled in drawing a bowstring or skinning a rabbit. But no boy ever had such beautiful eyes, large and expressive beneath perfect dark brows, eyes as green as the sea off Dover—Sommersett eyes, she thought.
Elizabeth blinked back the moisture that gathered in her own eyes as she gazed at Mary. “What will the world be for her?” she murmured, as much to herself as to Cain. “Where does she belong?”
“Wherever she wants to,” he answered. “I will teach her our ways, and you will teach her of her English heritage. Mar’ee will find her own path . . . and she will run over it as lightly as the mist skims over the sea.” He pulled Elizabeth close against him. “Are you sorry? Did you make the wrong choice when you followed me back to this land?”
She whirled in his arms and hugged him tightly. “Never!” she cried. “Never. You . . . your people have given me a happiness . . . a peace I never knew existed. I—”
“Eliz-a-beth! Eliz-a-beth!” Dame Equiwa came toward them with a brightly decorated cradleboard in her arms. “Your small warrior is awake,” she explained good-naturedly, “and he’s fussing for what only you can give him.”
Elizabeth took the baby and began to whisper calming endearments as she unlaced him from the softly padded cradleboard. “All right, all right, sweetness,” she murmured. “I believe his hair is going to be much lighter than Mary’s,” she said to Cain, “but these eyes are getting browner every day.”
Cain took his two-week-old son from her gently and cuddled him against his chest. “Proper color eyes for a man,” he teased, “human eyes.”
The baby cooed and stared wide-eyed at his mother’s face. Then one corner of the tiny mouth turned up in a smile.
“It’s time you had a name,” Elizabeth said. “I don’t know why—”
“Cocumtha!” Mary shrieked with joy. “She comes! Cocumtha comes!”
Elizabeth stepped around Cain’s bulk to look down the beach. Mary was already leading a group of shouting children toward the approaching procession of men and women. Swinging from a stout pole between two bearers was the leather sack-chair that could only contain Cain’s indomitable grandmother, Mistress Virginia Dare.
“I told you Cocumtha could smell a feast days away,” Cain said. “She’s come to share our joy of this little son and to give him a name.”
“Well, she’d better not decide to call him Walter Raleigh, or Ananias, after her father.”
Cain laughed. “Would you prefer Mikoppoki-naakun or Kuikuenkuikiilat?”
“Frog? You would, wouldn’t you? You’d name your firstborn son Frog just to annoy me,” she teased back. She knew that their son would have an Indian baby name, a secret name, and later a name that he would earn and live by as an adult. She was certain that Mistress Dare would chose a proper English name for the baby to please her granddaughter by marriage. “I was thinking more of Henry, or perhaps Arthur. Henry Dare—that has a solid ring to it.”
“Aiiee. But what do they mean, these English names? They sound like bare feet slapping against mud.” He kissed the top of the infant’s head and handed him to his mother. The bright-eyed baby was sucking hungrily at his fingers. “Feed him,” Cain said. “He needs his strength for a name day.”
“I don’t suppose you suggested any names to your grandmother the last time we saw her,” Elizabeth said. She nestled the baby against her and pulled a full breast from her soft doeskin gown. Everyone in the village had run down the beach to meet their guests, and she and Cain and the baby were alone. “Pretty names?”
“Pretty,” he scoffed. “Pretty for a warrior?” He looked down at them with loving
eyes. “Perhaps I did mention that your father’s name was Roger.”
Her eyes sought his. “I loved him dearly, but I’d not name our son for that hard man. If I had a choice, he would be called Adam.”
“What means this . . . this Adam?”
“He was the first man my God created.”
“He was a good man?”
“I believe that all men and women spring from his loins.”
“Adam. Adam Dare.” Cain pursed his lips and nodded slowly. “Yes, it sounds like an arrow hitting a mark. A good name. It may be that Cocumtha will chose this Adam name.” He smiled at her and his son. “In fact, Eliz-a-beth mine, I will wager you a new copper cooking pot on it.”
“And where would you get a copper pot?”
“Ah hah!” He grinned. “Always does a woman question, question a man when he brings her presents. A woman should say ‘Thank you’ to her lord, and be properly grateful. Like so.” Quickly, he removed a leather pouch from the cradleboard and took out a beautiful necklace of silver beads and turquoise. His hands trembled as he fastened it around her neck.
“Oh, Cain,” she cried. “It’s beautiful. But where . . .”
He stepped back to see how the necklace graced her smooth throat. “You traded your jewelry to bring us home,” he said huskily in Algonquian. “Tonight, you receive many gifts from our friends and relatives in honor of your new son. There will be feasting and dancing—all will share in our joy. But this one is selfish. He wants to see your eyes alone when I give this to you.”
Elizabeth touched the brilliant blue stones one after another. “I’ve never seen anything like this. But our tribe doesn’t—”
“No, not our people. The necklace comes from far away to the south in the land of the setting sun. These stones”—he fingered one of the turquoises—“ are said to be pieces of the sky.”
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