The Maidenhead

by Parris Afton Bonds

  Radcliff’s smile matched his own. "Why not? I’ll shuffle, you cut. You do so well at that sort of thing."

  He ignored the oblique reference to his past. "I’m saving my last cut for afterward, Radcliff. I’ll shuffle this one."

  "Plan on cutting your wrists should you lose?" Radcliff drawled.

  He wasn’t going to let the man goad him into unfocused anger. "King high, ace low?" He deftly riffled the deck of cards, watching for his favorite card.

  Radcliff shrugged. "Aye."

  His fingers felt clumsy. Everything was at stake here. He either gained all—Radcliff Manor and revenge—or lost all. Ant Hill, the sanctuary he had carved from the wilderness, would be Radcliff’s.

  Mad Dog drew a fortifying breath. When he spotted the card, he dragged his left thumb across it and palmed it into his left hand, bringing the card to the bottom of the deck. One more time he shuffled. Feeling the sweat beading at his temples, he passed the shuffled deck to Radcliff.

  Wordlessly, Radcliff completed the cut.

  In perfect rhythm, Mad Dog spread the cards face down across the table with one smooth swoop so that they looked like a picket fence along a country road.

  “Your draw," he told Radcliff.

  The man reached out a lace-ruffled wrist, his dexterous fingers slipping a card from the spread. He glanced at it, and a slow smile rifted his mouth. “Your turn."

  Mad Dog realized that the lace ruffles worked to Radcliff’s advantage. And his own advantage? His wife’s tutelage. Now if he could only pull off the illusion. His hand shaking, he drew a card.

  With a self-satisfied smile, Radcliff flipped over his card. Its jovial face was that of King Henry VIII. “That will be hard to trump."

  He knew he had one chance to beat Radcliff’s king. He delayed the outcome. He lifted his refilled tankard in a toast of mockery to his opponent. “May the best man win."

  Radcliff nodded in acknowledgment.

  He took a drink, then lifted his card’s edge— he had managed to pull it off! He had manipulated the joker, the highest trump! No wonder the word triumph derived from it. The joker represented the court jester who could assume without rebuke any role he chose.

  All Mad Dog had to do was lay down the card and Radcliff Manor—and revenge—were at long last his.

  And in that instant he knew. He saw it coming. Saw that he was being tricked into careless cruelty again. Only this time, it wasn’t Radcliff but he himself who was the trickster.

  He shoved the winning card back into the spread with the others. "You win, Radcliff.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Feeling thoroughly disgruntled, Jack strode away from the Jamestown custom house. It was Good Friday, the twenty-second of March, and everything was closed up tighter than a clam, including the partially completed Golden Parrot.

  The afternoon sun was high and he was hot. Verily, he could use a draught of ale. No, what he really could use was a kick in the ass. He had to be crazy in the head coming back to this hellhole.

  He steered his course for the Maidenhead. He got no farther than the wharves when a man’s voice hailed him. "Sirrah, would your vessel be going upriver?"

  He cocked a quizzical glance at the man, a coxcomb by dress. "If I am?”

  "I desire to go as far as Henrico.” He dug into his purse and held out a few Dutch guilders. "I would pay my fare. Allow me to introduce myself.” He swept off his hat with a half bow. "I am Nigel Jarvis, late of His Majesty's prison, Marshalsea."

  "Keep your coins, my friend. The ride is on me. I have had the pleasure of bed and board in one of Good King James’s dungeons."

  Once the seamen, well seasoned by now, unfurled the Maidenhead's sails and she was underway, Jack invited Jarvis to the captain’s chart room immediately below the poop deck. It was warm and very quiet except for the creaks of the rigging.

  As there was no ale to be purchased ashore, he popped open one of the French wines ordered by a Bermuda City planter. With a mental shrug, he figured, so what if one bottle was broken in transportation?

  He propped his jackboots on the desk cluttered with compass, astrolabe, sextant, hourglass, maps, and the scrolled deed placing a lien on Radcliff’s property. "Henrico is but a hamlet," he told the man across from him. He took a sip of the strong white wine, then asked, "What calls you there?"

  "A beauteous maiden. The Lady Clarissa Lockridge. You know of her?"

  "Beauteous indeed, but married, my good man.”

  "So I learned.” With a shrug, Jarvis sipped wine from the leather noggin. "Her father is wealthy enough. An annulment can be bought. Anything can be bought."

  The vessel’s great rudder squeaked beneath them as the steersman veered his course again to follow the river around another bend. “I would have said so myself six months ago. However—’’ He broke off at the commotion coming from above deck. “By your leave," he said, setting down his noggin and rising to leave the room.

  Jack took the companion ladder to the poop deck three rungs at a time and stepped out onto the deck just as the lookout in the bow blew a shrill horn. He crossed to the starboard rail. From the deck, he looked out upon a score of canoes and a nightmare of painted Indians. In one, a female stood braced, waving her hands for attention. Then he heard his name. He looked closer. By Jove, the woman was Modesty. With her was the old witch of the woods, Juana.

  "Drop the ladder,” he told Elias.

  Soon Modesty was scrambling up the swaying rope ladder. He helped her over the bulwark and said, "You look more frightful than Juana, if that is possible." The Indian woman still sat stolidly in the canoe.

  Modesty was gasping, her coif had slipped off her head and was hanging by its ties around her throat, and her hands trembled as though every ounce of her energy had been expended. “Jack, there’s going to be an—an attack on Jamestown!"

  "Whoa.” She wasn't making sense. "Those Indians in the canoes?" One of them he had thought looked like Arahathee. "Come on below out of the sunlight and have a drink to steady yourself, Modesty."

  As if dazed, she allowed him to lead her to his cabin, where Jarvis was sampling another noggin of the wine. Jack introduced the two and seated Modesty in the window bay.

  Her eyes closed, her body slumped, and utter weariness issued from her in a long, shaky sigh.

  "Now tell me what’s this all about," he said, pouring wine for her. “Didn’t I see Arahathee out there?"

  “Aye." She opened her eyes and accepted the noggin. "Juana and I were coming down river to warn Jamestown when—”

  "A long haul to row,” he said, taking a seat at his desk.

  "—when we came upon Arahathee and his warriors.” She took a deep swig and continued. "Listen to me, Jack! Juana . . . she learned of a planned attack. Every community . . . every house . . . every white person . . . man, woman, child . . . the Algonquin confederation plan to burn us all out. Today!"

  He came to his feet. Fear, a kind of fear new to him, froze his blood. "Henrico! Have you alerted them?"

  She gave a weary nod. "But I do not think me message was taken seriously."

  "Juana can go on downriver to Jamestown and the surrounding plantations with the warning. We’ll need Arahathee and his braves to help defend the upstream communities."

  He came around his desk, heading for the door to give the orders, when she caught his full sleeve. Her strangely colored eyes were shadowed with anxiety. “Jack, Mad Dog rode out of Ant Hill yesterday. He was angry with me. I don’t know where he is."

  "He was at the Golden Parrot’s gaming tables last night," Jarvis drawled from his corner chair.

  "The gaming tables?" she repeated, just like a parrot.

  Jarvis fingered his golden earring. "Aye . . . err, well, the truth be the man wagered you and Ant Hill against the chap Radcliff s estate. Mad Dog . . . err, lost Ant Hill but got to keep you. I think he was riding back last night to collect you.”

  Now she jumped to her feet, splashing the wine over her dirty white
apron. "Wagered me? How could he! I am his wife!"

  Jarvis lifted his shoulders. "Well, he said that he had bought you, so he could sell—"

  "Jarvis, you talk too much," Jack said, striding out the cabin door. Could he get to Henrico in time?

  "I’ll kill Mad Dog, Jack!" she screamed after him. “Do yew hear me, Jack? I’ll kill the bloody varmint, then sell that lion’s mane of his scalp to Opechancanough!"

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Patrick was still at the church, talking with the last of his lingering parishioners while Clarissa had returned home to finishing preparing the Good Friday supper.

  She frowned at the sound of gunfire as she worked in the kitchen. It would be extraordinary and profane for one of the villagers to be hunting on a holy day. Frying pan still in hand, she rose from the hearth and turned just in time to see the Indian enter. In his arm he held a flintlock musket. His dusky face was smeared with war paint. Coldly, he lifted the musket and trained its long barrel on her.

  She never thought death would come for her in this manner. She had seen herself living to be one of those wealthy London doyennes, venerated by society. Odd, too, that in her imaginings she had never seen an elderly Nigel at her side.

  The warrior took another step toward her, close enough for her to fling in his face the skillet’s hot melted bear’s fat she had intended to pour over a bowl of parched corn.

  With a howl of pain, he dropped the musket. His hands flew to his scalded face. He was blinded, and the skin on his chest was already bubbling from the grease burns.

  She grabbed up his musket and rushed past him out the door. Picking up her skirts in her free hand, she dashed toward the grape arbor. If she could shoulder her way through the brush and bramble without being seen, she could make her way downhill to the riverbank.

  War whoops pierced the air. Indians were pouring out of the forest. They seemed more intent on plundering the houses first, which meant murdering anyone who got in their way. And she wasn't about to.

  Oh, dear God, let there be a skiff, a canoe, even a barge, to take her away from this horror. She plunged into the ragged underbrush. Briers tore at her face and her sleeves and skirts.

  She had gone no farther than half a dozen yards when the screams of a child reached her. She kept plowing ahead, slowed, paused . . . then whirled around and started back up the hill.

  There in the grape arbor an Indian had a squirming, screaming Sally pinned beneath one knee. His hatchet was raised. He meant to deprive her of her auburn curls.

  Clarissa raised the musket and squeezed the trigger. The musket misfired when the flint dropped out.

  At that same moment, the warrior spotted her. A fiendish grin lit his copper face. Releasing Sally, he charged toward her.

  She took the musket barrel between her hands and swung its iron-shod butt to bash him between his eyes. His head caved in like an eggshell. She thought she was going to retch.

  In that instant, she understood and knew she loved Patrick. She knew that nothing was as strong as real gentleness. Nothing so gentle as real strength.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Smoke and ashes billowed into the sky before the spire of Henrico’s church even came into view. At least, it was still standing! Jack breathed a sigh of relief. Occasional musket fire punctuated the heavy summer air.

  Elias piloted the caravel to the leeward side of the forested peninsula and moored it for boats to be sent ashore. Jack was in the foremost dinghy, Jarvis in another somewhere behind him, and Arahathee and his canoes of warriors followed.

  Cutlass in hand, Jack waded through the sand-sucking river bottom and ran ashore. His worst fears were realized.

  Every house had been torched. Close to a gutted storehouse lay the bloody body of a scalped man. Further on, at what had been the Company barn and was now a bonfire, corpses of both men and women, even children, were scattered. Some of them had been stripped of their clothing, others horribly mutilated. Near an overturned hogshead of pickled beef, a dog lay dead, its body pierced by an arrow.

  The acrid smell of gunpowder stung Jack's nostrils. The muzzles of muskets poked from the church’s sashes that had been slid open. Apparently, the survivors of the Indian raid were holed up in the church. Their attackers were concealed in the pines and brush beyond the green, but flaming paths through the sky marked their arrows' courses. The green was littered with the bodies of Indian warriors who had tried to creep closer to the defenders within the church.

  Arahathee, his warriors, and a dozen of the Maidenhead’s corsairs fanned out at the water's edge of the embattled village. Jack sprinted across its common. His back felt broad, an easy target for an arrow or even an errant musket ball.

  He found cover behind a privy, miraculously untouched. A yeoman who shared the concealment with him had not been so fortunate. The man was propped against the privy's blood- splattered planks.

  When he noticed Jack, he beckoned him nearer. The man’s eyes were glazed with horror, with pain. “Wouldn’t happen to have a pipe on you, would you?"

  "Sorry, your lordship. The best I can do is flint and tinder to light one." The man deserved at least a tide of respect when dying.

  A dark stain on the man’s canvas tunic was slowly, steadily expanding. Powder burns around the wound indicated to Jack that the man had been shot at close range and nothing further could be done for him.

  So the Powhattans were using firearms. He’d wager his last doubloon that Radcliff had furnished the weapons. “What happened?"

  "The Indians . . . they came . . . as friends this . . . morning. Eating our proffered food. They . . . surprised us. Seized our own tools and weapons . . . and attacked."

  Jack glanced back at the church. An indigo pall of mingled gunpowder and smoke enwreathed it. A single arrow protruded from the heavy door. Had she made it to the safety of the church? He weighed the time factor of making a dash for the church to ascertain his hope—or backtracking to her cabin to confront his dread.

  The groan from the dying man beside him suggested a further possibility, that she might be there, still alive.

  Jack spotted Jarvis crouched not far away behind a ox cart. “Take over here," he called. “Drive the red devils off."

  Alarm glimmered in the man’s eyes, and Jack assured him, "I am not turning coward, Jarvis. I’ll be back."

  He hoped.

  He covered the mile-long path to the ironworkers’ huts faster than the time he had outrun the bailiffs and monks who chased him through Whitefriars. The site of the smoking huts and the carnage made his stomach queasy.

  Behind him, he heard running footsteps. He whirled around in time to spit a war-painted Indian on his cutlass. Bracing his boot on the ribs of the fallen Indian, he yanked out his cutlass’s bloody blade.

  Her cabin could be any one of the cluster of what had been homes and were now charred stubble of timbers. Then he saw the crumpled gangly body. Lying before a partial, still- smoldering doorframe, Walter Bannock had died defending his home and family.

  Farther inside was another body. Nothing but ashes and unidentifiable. A sickening sorrow tore at Jack’s lungs. Oh, God, was Rose among the rubble?

  He stepped over Bannock’s hacked corpse and prowled the ruins with a heavy heart and not much hope. Prying up still-smoking timbers, he burnt his hands. He found little—a pewter plate, a clay pitcher still intact, a pair of tongs, a small metal chest with brass handles.

  Had she and the children been taken hostage? He doubted it. This was a full-scale massacre. So where could they be? And then he heard it— a faint bawling that could be a stray calf. Or a toddler.

  He whirled, loped down the hill in the direction of the sawmill. The muted noise, more like coughing, came again, from there at the edge of the James, where a millrace channeled the water into a stream that poured over the mill wheel.

  The smell of freshly sawn wood and sawdust flurried in his nostrils. He glanced around to see only boards and planks, ripsaws and sash saws, the mill wheel’s wat
er buckets. “Rose?" he called out with more hope in his voice than was in his heart.

  A tow-headed tyke lifted his head from the wooden chute where water had run when the sluice gates were cranked open. Behind him, another boy’s head popped up. “Mom! Tis all right! ’Tis that man that was at the dance in Jamestown."

  Like a fairy, Rose, cradling her baby, fluttered up from the mound of sawdust in the saw pit. Or was it gold dust?

  He scrambled down into the pit and grabbed her and the child tightly against him. Her clear eyes, their lashes tipped with sawdust, stared up at him, searching. For what? “Ye came back,” she whispered.

  “Aye. While I was gone I had time to think. I realized all my life I had been looking for something and I finally saw that I didn’t have anything. Until you."

  Her lower lip trembled. “There is not just only me. There are the three boys. Four of us.”

  Four! He rolled his eyes. Had he, Mad Dog, and everyone in this wilderness gone bloody crazy?

  The wee one, little Jack, whimpered again. Jack shrugged and stared down into his Madonna’s lovely face. "Until you four."

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Behind the church’s altar, Clarissa gathered into the folds of her voluminous skirts five motherless children she had rounded up and herded inside the church. Rolfe’s wife was dead. The same for the ironworkers’ and the husbandmen’s wives.

  Two men grimly fired from the church’s sliding wooden sashes that could be opened on warm summer days. Old Clem's antiquated harquebus wouldn’t hit anything farther than ten yards. Rolfe had a flintlock pistol and a blunderbuss.

  While the two men attempted to keep the Indians at bay, Patrick, his nightshirt only half tucked into his breeches, took turns loading the muzzles of their fowling pieces. He ramrodded round balls or buckshot, and, when required, a paper that held the explosive charge. Streaks of gunpowder painted his face like one of the Powhattan warriors.