Lorraine looked up penetratingly.
While the innkeeper chewed on his lip, the saucy voice of the serving wench answered Raile. She chuckled and her big breasts strained against her homespun bodice as she looked sideways at him.
“Things are bad as can be,” she averred. “Governor Berkeley’s a wicked old man who’s married himself a wench half his age—and what cares he if the whole Virginia Colony gets itself scalped so long as he has his fun? Right, Quincy?”
“Poll,” snapped Quincy, the innkeeper, in a quelling voice. “Try to remember that though she’s young, Lady Frances is the widow of our revered Governor Culpeper of Carolina.”
Poll sniffed. “Frances Culpeper’s a—”
Quincy’s embarrassed cough covered up Poll’s opinion of Lady Frances. With a deprecating smile he explained, “Poll’s acquainted with half the sailors who come this way. So she hears all the news.”
“And what is the news from Virginia?” Raile’s eyes narrowed as he sipped his wine.
“There’s a war going on between the governor’s clique and the settlers. A young hothead named Bacon’s leading the settlers.”
“Bacon . . .” mused Raile. “I’ve heard that name before.”
“Ah, ye’ll have heard of Colonel Nathaniel Bacon—this young one’s his nephew and heir. His name is Nathaniel too!”
“ ’Tis said his wife’s father back in England disinherited her for marrying young Bacon,” put in the irrepressible Poll, who, having poured the wine, was now lingering to gossip.
“Because he was poor?” Lorraine asked.
“Because he was wild!” said Poll with a leer.
“The young man’s rich,” sighed her employer. “Young Bacon came to Virginia two years ago with a vast sum of money and bought two large plantations—one near the Falls and the other one, where he makes his home, in the Curies.”
“In the Curies?” Raile asked. His eyes had grown alert.
“Aye, those large loops and hooks the James River makes at that point. ’Tis said his plantation house is a fine one—though not nearly so fine as Green Spring, the governor’s plantation.”
The innkeeper was about to add that Governor Berkeley had conflicting interests since he was trading with Indians as well as being a partner in the proprietorship of Carolina—but prudence asserted itself. Poll was listening and she talked too much. “Poll,” he said impatiently, “there’s a gentleman over there in the corner who’s banging his tankard on the table to get your attention. Go see what he wants.”
Poll went off reluctantly and Quincy, companionably sipping wine with Raile and Lorraine, detailed a tangled series of confrontations and counterconfrontations—between the governor and the settlers, between the settlers and the Indians.
An uneasy peace had reigned since the terrible Indian massacres of 1622 and 1644 had nearly wiped out the white settlements in Virginia. But of late Indian incursions had been increasingly frequent, especially along Virginia’s wild western frontier. There the beleaguered settlers were clamoring for war against them. Under the pretense of keeping the peace, Governor Berkeley forbade all trade with the Indians—except his own, of course, and that of his cronies, who promptly enriched themselves by monopolizing the rich Indian fur trade.
But the situation had worsened. Fleeing from their enemies the Senecas, the fierce Susquehannocks had fled south from the head of the Chesapeake, raiding at will, and joined forces with the Piscataway in Maryland. Maryland had sent a thousand men to besiege their encampment but had failed to dislodge them. When Maryland had asked Virginia for help, troops had arrived under the command of Colonel John Washington. The hasty Colonel John had ordered six of the Indian chiefs killed. Both Virginia and Maryland promptly offered reparations but the furious Susquehannocks refused. Instead, in retaliation they swept across the Potomac and all the way down to the upper James, killing “ten for one” to compensate. Having killed sixty settlers, they then demanded reparations as the price of peace or they would kill “to the last man.” They were refused by the enraged colonists, some of whom had bought their land once, twice, or even three times from different groups of claimant Indians who wandered by, and were determined not to, in effect, “buy” it once again from the Susquehannocks.
The Indians then made good their threat by murdering three hundred more of the scattered settlers.
An experienced soldier was sought to fight the Indians—and found in the Cavalier campaigner Sir Henry Chicheley, who was commissioned to recruit a large force. But no sooner was Sir Henry ready to march then Governor Berkeley, exercising the almost sovereign rights granted to him and his clique by Charles II, canceled his commission and ordered a disgusted Chicheley to disband his troops.
By now the whole countryside was in an uproar. In place of action, Berkeley ordered more forts built. This struck new despair into the hearts of the settlers, for they could not fall back on those forts already built for protection. That line of forts, which Berkeley had previously taxed Virginians so heavily to build across the northern and western frontiers, had been shoddily constructed by the cronies to whom he had awarded fat contracts and had proved almost useless in holding back the rampaging savages.
The distraught settlers, driven from their homes by continuous guerrilla warfare, mourning the loss of friends and loved ones, and believing that their own families would be the next to die, now sought a leader—and found one in fiery young Cambridge graduate Nathaniel Bacon. A force of several hundred planters and frontiersmen, armed and ready to fight, descended upon him one soft spring afternoon at his plantation of Curies’ Neck on the north side of the James to plead for his leadership. The reckless twenty-eight-year-old Bacon, enraged by the Indians’ recent murder of one of his overseers, was quick to accept command. Gifted with eloquence, and an impassioned advocate of individual rights, the charming young planter was transformed overnight into a mesmerizing leader that men would follow anywhere.
Raile’s brow furrowed at this amazing recital. “You mean Governor Berkeley provided no troops at all in such a crisis?” he demanded incredulously.
Quincy cocked a cynical eye at him. “And risk losing his own profitable deals with the Indians? As Poll would say, Lady Frances wouldn’t like that! They have a palatial home in Green Spring. Indian troubles won’t touch them there.”
“And where do matters stand now?”
“The settlers proclaimed young Bacon a general. Then the governor declared him a rebel, and sent three hundred mounted men to the Falls of the James to capture him.”
“Berkeley sent his forces against the settlers and not against the Indians?” Raile asked, shaking his head.
“Yes. But Bacon was gone when they reached the Falls. He had already ridden south with sixty men and subdued the Indians there. When his forces found themselves short of provisions and losing men, Bacon returned to discover the Susquehannocks had built a fort on an island in the Roanoke River. After a two-day battle, Bacon’s forces won a decisive victory and broke the power of the fierce Susquehannocks. And what was his reward?” Quincy snorted. “The governor paid a call at Curies’ Neck plantation to tell Elizabeth Bacon he was going to hang her husband as soon as he was caught!”
“And was he?”
“I don’t know. That was the last word we had of matters in Virginia.”
As she listened to all this, Lorraine could not help but sympathize with the beleaguered colonists. She remembered what it had been like in squabbling Rhode Island, where the colonists were always afraid the Indians might rise in the night and murder them all.
“Did you have a fair voyage up from the south?” the innkeeper asked.
“Aye, the Lass gave us no trouble,” said Raile. Another lass had, however. Still puzzled by her cold behavior, Raile cast a thoughtful look at Lorraine.
As soon as the water casks were filled in Charles Towne, they returned to the Lass and cast off.
“What would you have done if you had been told the insurrection in
Virginia was over and the planters had won?” Lorraine asked him.
“I would have repaired the mast in Charles Towne and set sail for Barbados,” he said crisply.
Lorraine was surprised. She had expected him to say, “I would have proceeded to Jamestown to have the ship properly repaired,” but he had not. Was he trying to tell her that it was really the sale of the guns and not the lure of a lost love that was sending him in such haste to Virginia? Her attitude toward him softened.
“I wonder how things are now in Virginia,” she murmured.
“They won’t have improved,” predicted Raile grimly.
He couldn’t have been more right. Since the last tidings had reached the innkeeper in Carolina and while the Lass was making her way northward to the Virginia Capes, much had happened.
Governor Berkeley had called for an election of burgesses—the first in fourteen years—while Bacon was away. Henrico County had promptly elected Bacon and his lieutenant Captain Crews to represent them in the house.
Nathaniel Bacon, knowing his reception in the capital at Jamestown might be less than warm, had set out in a sloop with forty of his supporters, but he was soon captured by a heavily gunned vessel sent by the governor. Bacon was forced to read on bended knee a prepared confession of guilt to the governor’s charges there in the State House. Loudly and publicly before the assembled burgesses, Berkeley forgave him—but by now Bacon knew the governor’s temper. Fearing rearrest, he took advantage of a moonless night to slip from Jamestown Island to the mainland and ride hard for his plantation at Curies’ Neck. There he assembled several hundred armed men and marched on Jamestown.
On the green between the river’s precipitous bank and the State House, a wild scene took place. Bacon’s men occupied both the fort, to prevent resistance, and the ferry, to prevent escape. With his fusiliers stationed in double lines commanding the State House, Bacon announced that he had come to be officially commissioned to go against the Indians.
At that point Governor Berkeley burst out of the State House, in a rage that his thirty men and four cannon were insufficient against Bacon’s superior force.
Tearing open his coat to reveal his chest in its white ruffled shirt, the governor cried out dramatically for them to shoot him. While the act might have been tempting to Bacon’s followers, they resisted it. Watching all this were the burgesses, peering down excitedly from the upstairs windows of the State House, where they were in session, Bacon’s fusiliers suddenly aimed their flintlock muskets at those windows, and at the metallic click of the cocked fusils, the lawmakers promptly buckled to force, screaming down that Bacon should have his commission. The Assembly declared war on the Indians; the governor signed a commission naming General Bacon commander in chief and authorized him to recruit a thousand men. “Bacon’s laws” were promptly passed—statutes which provided that all adult white male freedmen and not just landowners would be eligible to vote, that removed the councilors’ exemption from taxation and restricted them from holding multiple offices, and a number of other changes the settlers had long clamored for as well.
The uneasy peace did not last long.
When eight more settlers were tortured and roasted alive by the Indians just forty miles away in an area Bacon had not yet cleared of marauders, the wild young leader recruited a force of thirteen hundred men to move against them—only to learn that the governor was raising troops of his own to move against him. Enraged by this treachery. Bacon swooped east toward Jamestown. Berkeley fled to sanctuary on the untroubled Eastern Shore, where the Chesapeake Bay would lie between him and the angry settlers.
But the governor swore he would be back.
Bacon knew how to handle that. He captured several ships and soon his little fleet patrolled the Chesapeake, holding the fuming governor at bay. Then Bacon set off at the head of his men through tangled brush into the treacherous bogs and mosquito-riden mists of the Dragon Swamp in pursuit of the now-fleeing Indians. He returned victorious but with a diminished force of only a hundred and fifty men, for many had chosen to return to their homes once the Indians were dispatched.
Bad news greeted the young rebel leader when he reached Henrico County. While he was gone, the wily old governor had returned from Accomack and by trickery captured Bacon’s little fleet. Berkeley now occupied Jamestown with heavy cannon and a thousand men. The governor’s methods of recruitment were extravagant: he promised his new recruits exemption from taxes for twenty-one years, spoils including estates of the rebels, and freedom for any of the rebels’ indentured servants willing to join him.
Bacon was tired, and in a passionate reaction to Berkeley’s constant treachery and unremitting hatred, he did not pause to gather more men, but instead whirled about and marched on Jamestown with the men he had. It was a move that Berkeley had not contemplated. So swiftly did the young rebel leader descend upon the capital that he caught Governor Berkeley unaware and had him bottled up inside the town.
At that point, the Likely Lass was making her way north. All the way, Raile had made no move to touch Lorraine, as if he were waiting for her anger to wane. The fever had left him thinner, exhausted, and he had been sleeping long hours every day to build up his strength.
“I do not know what we will find in Jamestown,” he told her soberly. “But MacTavish will remain aboard the Lass while we are there. You would be safer aboard as well.”
Stay aboard and miss learning whether he had come to sell the guns or to seek out Laurie Ann MacLaud? Never, she thought.
“I prefer to go ashore,” she insisted.
“Very well.” His tone was flat. “Either way, Lorraine—it is your decision.”
As it turned out, their arrival in Jamestown was barely noticed. They had passed Cape Hatteras under full sail, gone around Norfolk, and into the mouth of the James. But when they reached Jamestown on September 13, they were astonished to find the town was under siege.
A tense atmosphere prevailed when Raile and Lorraine went ashore in the town where a roguish thirteen-year-old Pocahontas had once turned cartwheels naked through the streets to the amusement of onlookers. There was no such frivolity today. The town, which straggled for a mile or so along the riverfront, some of its row houses more suited to medieval Europe, was filled with people.
Virginia’s total population was said to be only forty thousand but it seemed to Lorraine that they must all have converged upon the capital that day. Armed men jostled about—many of them raw recruits being barked at by a handful of harassed officers. A cheer went up as the governor, surrounded by a small coterie of officers, rode by splendidly garbed. For a moment his eyes rested appreciatively on Lorraine—she did not like the look of him.
She could see Raile assessing him through narrowed eyes.
They moved on through the crowd, Raile taking note of the palisade the governor’s men had flung across the isthmus, and the heavy guns that commanded it.
“The governor does not like being bottled up,” observed a voice nearby. “He swears he will have not only Bacon hanged but all his followers as well.”
“He will decimate these woods,” was another settler’s quiet reply. “For all the frontier now follows Bacon.”
Having overheard some of the discussion about them, Lorraine turned to Raile in bewilderment.
“If the governor does not like being bottled up, why doesn’t he break out? If he has a thousand men and Bacon but a hundred and fifty?”
Raile peered out into the distance. “I think I see the reason,” he said. “Observe.” And Lorraine followed his gesture.
In the distance another fortification was going up. Men were busily working, swarming about, building a strong earthen breastwork across the sandy isthmus, a narrow neck of land that joined the peninsula with the mainland. There was an earthen barricade there from which Lorraine could see flutters of white cloth.
She peered at them, straining to see.
For a bewildered moment she thought the rebels were waving flags of truce�
�and then she realized that those white flutters were aprons.
“Why . . . why, those are women!” she cried indignantly.
“Aye,” said a grim voice at her elbow. “Those women—wives of the governor’s supporters—were captured by that villain Nathaniel Bacon. His force is small and he knows we would defeat him if he advanced upon us. So he has sent out bands and seized our women. He has made them conspicuous in aprons and is forcing them to walk back and forth as a living shield while he constructs his breastworks—for he knows that without them our heavy guns would promptly destroy him.”
“An ingenious plan,” commented Raile with raised eyebrows. “One that I confess would not have occurred to me. But if Bacon has no heavy guns of his own, what will it avail him?”
“He is said to be bringing up guns of his own.”
Lorraine stared at those flutters of white in fascination. It was too far away to see any of them clearly, but she thought how furious those women must be, forced to aid the rebels against their own husbands! She wondered for a wild moment if Lady Frances, the governor’s wife, was among them.
No shots were fired.
Lorraine would have been stunned to learn that one of the women who walked that barricade, tossing her white apron in the September sunshine and saucily impersonating one of the reluctant loyalist captives—each of whom glared at her every time their paths happened to cross—was Laurie Ann MacLaud.
Laurie Ann, a big handsome girl, was cut out to be a pioneer woman, and a pioneer woman she was. The very woods spoke to her and she was as fearless in the desolate back country as any frontiersman.
Now her wide blue eyes were flashing with merriment as she watched the captive ladies file past her atop the well-trodden earthworks. Laurie Ann, who had a big laugh and a tigerish smile, was enjoying herself as she observed the sullen women making the long trek back and forth.
“Why don’t you take that cap off your hair and let the men of Jamestown see your face so they’ll know you’re not one of us?” snapped a plump perspiring lady in calico.
To Love a Rogue Page 25
