Raleigh's Page

by Alan Armstrong

  Chapter 3, enclosure men: for a good description, I went to James Shapiro’s 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare (London: Faber and Faber, 2005), 271–73. “Shakespeare’s ‘As You Like It’ made clear to contemporary audiences the plight of enclosure men. Elizabethans knew what it meant when old Adam staggered onstage at the beginning of Act II, scene vi, exhausted and starving in the Forest of Arden, and told Orlando, ‘I can go no further. Oh, I die for food! Here lie I down and measure out my grave’…. The early acts of the play circle back time and again to the problems caused by vagrancy and hunger, including Orlando’s angry words when Adam first suggests that they turn itinerant: ‘What, wouldst thou have me go and beg my food? Or with a base and boist’rous sword enforce a thievish living on the common road? This I must do or know not what to do.’” Chapter 4, Durham House: From Aubrey’s Brief Lives: “Durham House was a noble palace; after he [Raleigh] came to his greatness he lived there or in some apartment of it. I well remember his study, which was a little turret that looked into and over the Thames, and had the prospect which is pleasant perhaps as any in the World, and which not only refreshes the eie-sight but cheeres the spirits, and (to speake my mind) I beleeve enlarges an ingeniose man’s thoughts” (op. cit., 254).

  Concerning Raleigh’s interest in medicine, Aubrey again: “Sir Walter Raleigh was a great Chymist, and amongst some MSS. receipts I have seen some secrets from him. He studyed most in his Sea-Voyages, where he carried always a Trunke of Bookes along with him, and had nothing to divert him. He made an excellent Cordiall, good in Feavers, etc. Mr. Robert Boyle haz the recipe, and makes it and does great Cures by it…. He was no Slug; without doubt he had a wonderful waking spirit, and a great judgement to guide it” (ibid).

  The book of Spanish medicinal plants Raleigh had Andrew digest was fully titled, in its first English translation, Joyfull Newes out of the Newe-Found Worlde. It was compiled in Seville by a distinguished Spanish physician named Nicholas Monardes (1493–1588). For years, travelers returning from what we now call Central and South America brought Monardes bark, roots, seeds, flowers, leaves, and whole plants together with reports of their curative powers. His Joyfull Newes promised “present remedie for all diseases….” His chief remedy was tobacco, and his essay on it makes curious reading today. Raleigh’s copy was a translation made by John Frampton and published in 1577.

  Chapter 25: The Star Singers figure in Dutch engravings of that period. Their chant is a poem by Ian Hamilton Finlay.

  Chapter 30: The medicine root was probably ginseng. See Alan W. Armstrong, ed., “Forget Not Mee & My Garden…”: Selected Letters, 1725–1768, of Peter Collinson, F.R.S. (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2002), 70.

  Chapter 31: Captain Lane’s “wassador” was unrefined copper. Most was dark red but some was pale, almost yellow. It was prized for jewelry and gifts to the Indian gods.

  Chapter 32: The grass they peeled strands of silk from was probably what we know as yucca.

  Chapter 33: The priests may have put dried jimsonweed blossoms on Mr. Harriot and added its seeds and leaves to the fire. The smoke would have been mildly hallucinogenic.

  When Captain Lane led the late-winter expedition in search of wassador, he would have followed a course roughly like that shown on the map on Backmatter. They would have rowed north up Roanoke Sound, aiming west when they came to the much larger Albemarle Sound, paddling about forty miles—nearly its entire length—against stiff, late-winter winds and stinging snow before they turned north into the Chowan River, leading up to Chief Menatonon’s headquarters.

  Special thanks to Frances S. Pollard, director of library services, Virginia Historical Society; to Karin Wulf, book review editor of William and Mary Quarterly and associate professor of history and American Studies at the College of William and Mary; and to the librarians at the Neilson Library, Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts. Thanks also to Kristen Depken, to copy editor Jenny Golub, and to Joe Rayo at the Hayden Planetarium for celestial advice. Martha Armstrong, A. L. Hart, and Kate Klimo brought Andrew to life.

  This is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters with the exception of some well-known historical and public figures, are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical or public figures appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the entirely fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2007 by Alan Armstrong. Illustrations copyright © 2007 by Tim Jessell. All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  Jacket art copyright 2007 by Tim Jessell

  Jacket design by Jan Gerardi

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Armstrong, Alan W.

  Raleigh’s page / by Alan Armstrong; illustrated by Tim Jessell.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  SUMMARY: In the late 16th century, eleven-year-old Andrew leaves school in England and must prove himself as a page to Sir Walter Raleigh before embarking for Virginia, where he helps to establish relations with the Indians.

  1. Raleigh, Walter, Sir, 1552?–1618—Juvenile fiction. [1. Raleigh, Walter, Sir, 1552?–1618—Fiction. 2. Adventure and adventurers—Fiction. 3. Indians of North America—Fiction. 4. Virginia—History—16th century—Fiction. 5. Great Britain—History—Elizabeth, 1558–1603—Fiction.] I. Jessell, Tim, ill. II. Title.

  PZ7.A73352Ral 2007 [Fic]—dc22 2006008434

  eISBN: 978-0-375-89078-9

  v3.0