by Jenny Barden
‘The likeness is good,’ Kit said with genuine admiration, and he was conscious of White’s pride. This was his genius: he had a gift for recording life. He could imagine White making notes on all the plants and animals of Virginia, painting and naming every single living thing: all the birds and fish and trees and flowers, and all the kinds of savage people, their homes and curious ways.
‘You could spend a lifetime on limnings of all that is new here.’
‘I could,’ agreed White, inclining his heavy head, ‘and with great contentment.’
Kit smiled back, warming to him more. He’d seen White’s paintings before but had never appreciated the work that went into them. Perhaps this was how White envisaged his days playing out: in making volumes of notes to be sent back to England, observing the New World for the enrichment of the Old.
He looked round for Emme, wanting to show her the picture, certain it would charm her. It was as vibrant as a jewel, with the quality of an illumination in a rare Book of Hours, but better, in his view, because it was so true to life. He did not need to look far for her; she was heading towards him with little Georgie Howe at her side, her hand in his.
‘Master Kit!’
‘Mistress Emme!’
They spoke together and he laughed, but whereas he had begun joyfully he could see she was concerned. Her expression was grave and her tone unusually serious.
She beckoned him aside.
‘Georgie cannot find his father.’ She bent down and put her arm round the boy. ‘Make sure I have this right, please, Georgie.’
Emme looked up at Kit and he squatted down beside her, eye to eye with Georgie who couldn’t have been more than about seven years of age.
Emme spoke gently. ‘You were out with your father, and about a dozen others, catching crabs in the lagoon, along the sands and shallows. You were with your friends and you thought your father was with Master Harvie. That’s all correct, isn’t it?’
The boy nodded emphatically.
‘Yes. Please find him.’ Georgie pulled timidly on Emme’s sleeve.
‘We’ll find him, but we must be clear about this first. You came across Master Harvie but he did not know where your father was. Master Harvie told you he thought your father might have come back here. But he is not in your house and no one knows where he is. Since the sun is going down, you’re now worried.’
‘Yes, Mistress Emme. You need to come with me.’ Georgie took hold of her hand again and tried to pull her away.
Kit put his hand on Georgie’s shoulder and noticed that the boy’s eyes were puffy and close to running with tears. Probably the boy had been weeping while he searched, getting more upset the harder he looked. The boy had no mother alive, so more than likely the boy’s father was the only close relative he had left.
‘I found his clothes,’ Georgie said. ‘I can show you where they are.’ He danced from foot to foot as if on the point of running ahead.
‘You left them?’ Kit asked.
‘Yes. He’ll need them, won’t he?’
Kit nodded and spoke to Emme, but not so quietly that the boy couldn’t hear.
‘Stay here and save something for us. Georgie will need a meal when he gets back; so will his dad. I expect George the elder has fallen asleep in the sunshine and if he wakes up now he’ll find everybody gone. Don’t let the man wander off if he arrives while we’re searching. Keep him here.’
Emme looked uncertain.
‘Can’t I come too and help? I could look after Georgie.’
‘It would be better if you waited. Actually, no …’
Kit looked at her trusting face. If anything untoward had happened to George Howe he didn’t want Emme to be put at any risk. But she could keep the boy company while he searched with Manteo. If they needed to follow a trail he’d rather the boy wasn’t involved; tracking was best done by a few without distraction. He gave her a nod.
‘Thank you. I’d like you to come with us.’
He stood straight and patted Georgie on the back. ‘We’ll be as quick as possible; try not to worry. And you must stay with Mistress Emme. Now I ought to tell the Governor …’
He looked across the clearing and caught sight of Dyonis Harvie, another of the colony’s senior men, an Assistant like George Howe, whose distinguishing features were a diminutive frame and stubbly cheeks so burnt by the tropical sun that his face put Kit in mind of a strawberry. Harvie was a sober Kent yeoman with a scatter-brained pregnant wife. Kit doubted he had any skill at tracking, but Manteo would take care of that, and Harvie had seen George Howe last. He pointed him out to Emme.
‘Ask Master Harvie to come with us too.’
A few words with Manteo ensured that he followed discreetly. White seemed unperturbed, and waved Kit away, as if he was more bothered by the interruption than that one of his Assistants was missing. He’d started a new painting of a blue-legged crab based on one of those just caught, though it had been cooked pink which plainly presented him with a difficulty. Kit left him peering at it and frowning.
Kit tagged behind Emme who was hurried on by Georgie as fast as she could trot in her petticoats and skirts. Harvie and Manteo strode after them. They wound through the woods until they could see the shore to the west where the dunes shelved down to mud flats and reeds, and the sun flared over the water that led to the mainland a good three miles distant. It shimmered in the heat. From the bank where they stood, the vast unexplored continent looked no more than a faint line: a wavering streak drawn with one of White’s squirrel-hair brushes. To the south the reeds stretched in a brown blanket full of holes, reaching to the horizon in a rough wind-combed haze.
They all stopped with the boy and looked down at what he showed them: a pair of shoes and a heap of clothes – breeches, jerkin and hose.
Manteo bent and smelt them.
Harvie bit his thumbnail. ‘He must still be in his shirt tails,’ he said, as if that was a singular puzzle. He gestured to the water’s edge. ‘That’s where we were, spread out along the shore. Young Georgie here was with a few other boys, and his father was near me until he walked off over there.’ He pointed to the reeds. ‘I thought he’d gone back to his house when he didn’t reappear.’
‘Dad!’ Georgie called out, funnelling his hands around his mouth and shouting as he had done all the way through the forest. ‘Da-ad!’ But the answer was the same as it had been before: the whisper of the wind in rustling leaves, nothing more. He started to run down the slope, but Kit had anticipated what he’d try to do and sprang forwards to hold him back.
Emme caught up and hugged the boy tight.
‘Stay close to us, Georgie.’
‘Let us search carefully,’ Kit said to him. ‘We need you here to look out. If you see your father, then shout. That’s important. You understand?’
Georgie stared at him, bewildered.
Kit took hold of the boy’s shoulders. ‘If we’re down in the reeds, and he walks another way to the trees, we won’t see him. So you must watch for that and let us know if he does.’
Georgie nodded, sniffling.
Emme beckoned for the boy to sit with her and they huddled together facing the sun, their backs to an eroded bank trailing grey roots and brambles.
Kit walked back up to Manteo and Harvie. He could see that the Indian was scanning the land, water and sky. He would not rush him. He caught a trace of his smell: tangy, animal and earthy, a mix of the cedar oil he used to keep the insects away, the deerskin he wore round his loins, and the pigments that marked his skin.
Manteo held out his bare arm and pointed with one finger.
‘We should go over there, about two miles.’
‘Have you seen something?’ Kit kept his voice low.
‘The nahyápuw. Look.’
He pointed high in the sky at a soaring great bird, as big as an eagle, almost completely black against the light though its head showed a flash of white.
‘And see there, coming down …’
Kit saw
carrion-birds slowly circling, flecks in the distance, wings like boards with splintered tips, repeatedly appearing then disappearing as they wheeled in huge spirals.
‘Vultures. At least I think that’s what they are.’
He turned to Harvie who nodded. ‘Let us see what’s there.’
They walked down to the shallows then waded through the water. It was only a few feet deep at most, close to the rushes and reeds, the mud not too thick, mixed with shells and sand. Oystercatchers screeched around them; beyond that, all was quiet. The water lapped gently, sheltered from the breakers behind the ocean banks, and the wind had settled leaving dark clouds in billowing bands not far above the horizon, around which the sun shot brazen rays and lit up the hammerheads in shades of orange. For over half an hour they splashed through sea grass and sludge until Kit’s feet had lost sensation, and the air felt cold above the water, and still the vultures circled, not seeming to settle, and the eagle soared overhead, sometimes lost in the clouds. But gradually they drew closer and, bit by bit, Kit could see where some of the vultures had perched on dead branches sticking out from the level of the reeds, and he noticed that their heads were red as if stripped raw of flesh.
Manteo crept forwards cautiously, and so did Kit, eyeing the reeds and rushes that rose above their heads, and the sentinel vultures crowding together on the branches, and the water out in the open. Without any prompting they all crouched low. The trees were lost to sight. Soon all they could see was water and reeds, and then a black mass of vultures all rippling together like one giant scaly creature rising, hissing from the marsh, fragmenting before their eyes as the birds beat into the air, wings flapping ponderously.
Kit charged to the place where they’d been feeding, heedless of the noise he made and the soaking. He saw something like a manikin that had been used for target practice: limbs straight as poles, body bristling with arrows. It was floating belly uppermost in a few inches of water, the remains of a white shirt fanning out around the chest. The stomach was torn open and the head submerged. Blood turned the water red. He looked over his shoulder and saw Harvie edging forwards.
‘Is this George Howe? Is this his shirt?’
‘Yes.’
Harvie doubled over to be sick. He turned his back, spat and coughed, then bowed his head with his hands on his knees.
‘It was all he had on, knotted up between his legs like that.’
Kit touched Manteo’s arm.
‘We’d better look more closely.’
They waded nearer, and Kit didn’t want to see but knew that he had to.
By the body floated a long stick, forked at one end, bobbing about on the ripples they created. Kit picked it up.
‘George must have been using this for crabbing. It’s undamaged. He can’t have had a chance to try and defend himself.’
Manteo took the stick and used it to poke around under the body.
‘He would have been struck by arrows first.’
Kit counted. ‘Sixteen of them.’
‘Then …’ Manteo gave a grunt as he pushed up under the head. It emerged in a pulp, streaming blood.
Kit gagged and turned, clapping his hand over his eyes. ‘Let it drop.’
Manteo lowered what was left on the stick.
‘His head has been smashed. They will have used clubs and swords of wood. This is the way of the Secotans. They will have scalped him to show their people. Maybe they sought revenge …’
‘Revenge for what?’ Kit looked round, appalled.
Manteo spread his palms.
Kit shook his head. How could Manteo know? It couldn’t have been for anything that Howe had done. Whatever the explanation, what had happened was clear. George Howe had been murdered.
He looked at the torso, already bloated. All that was left of his stomach was a gaping hole.
‘He’s been disembowelled.’
‘The birds will have done that,’ Manteo said calmly.
Kit cast around for anything else that might offer clues, but there was nothing, not even a trace of the crabs Howe was collecting. Whoever had killed him probably took them. Kit looked across to the mainland, above which the sky glowed red as if the sun had torn itself going down. Was that where Howe’s murderers had come from?
‘The Secotans will have come from over there,’ Manteo said quietly, as if he had heard Kit’s inner question. ‘Dasemonkepeuc. It means “land pushing into water”. It is the nearest village to Roanoke. It is now home to the tribe which used to live here. They are all friends of the Secotans.’ He stared across to the west. ‘They will have come in canoes and hidden in the reeds.’ He glanced back at Kit and gave a lop-sided smile. ‘They will not be here now.’
Kit breathed out deeply. It was small comfort that the Secotans appeared to have gone away. When would they come back? He felt as if he was dragging a colossal weight and could go no further. He could barely move or think straight. What would happen to the colony now – to Georgie and Rob, to Emme and all his plans for the future? He looked back at the body and spat bile from his mouth.
‘We can’t leave him for the vultures.’ He turned to Harvie. ‘We must bury him.’
Harvie shook his head. ‘How can we without a shovel or spade?’
‘We’ll drag him ashore and bury him in the sand. We can dig a grave with branches.’
‘It’ll be dark before we’re finished.’
‘Even so, we must do it. We can come back tomorrow and bring weights to put over.’
‘I’ll dig,’ Harvie said simply, and waded towards the shore.
Kit looked at Manteo. ‘Can you pull up the body?’
‘I’ll do that, and I’ll help Master Harvie.’
‘When I come back with the boy …’
Manteo clapped his arm. ‘Master Howe will be buried. Do not worry.’
Kit began the long wade back to Emme and Georgie. When he saw them cuddled together he was glad that Emme was there to soften the blow he was about to deliver because, sure as he stood, he did not know how he could have broken the news to the boy if he’d had to do it by himself.
Georgie ran to him first. He made the boy settle then took Emme aside and told her softly away from Georgie’s hearing. He spared her the worst, and, when it was done, he watched Emme go to the boy. Then, while she spoke to him, he sat and clasped his hands around his knees, waiting for the child’s cries that came and rose and tore him inside out. Afterwards Kit led them to the place where Howe lay in his grave, not far from the reeds where he had breathed his last.
He took off his hat and held it in both hands.
‘Earth to earth,’ said Dyonis Harvie. ‘Rest in peace, George Howe. Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord. So saith the Spirit; they rest from their labours.’
‘Amen,’ Kit murmured, and opened his eyes to see Emme saying the same, her cheeks streaked with tears, the boy pressing against her, sobbing and shaking. Her skirts were wet through, and darkness covered her like a cloak.
Somehow he had to tell her that she could not stay on the island. It was not safe.
He put his arms round them both.
As Emme swept she heard a man whistling outside, and she began to hum softly to herself, picking up the tune of ‘Greensleeves’ that was so much part of her growing up it sent a tingle down her spine. She was in a cottage that could have been in England, for it looked much the same as many she’d seen on her father’s estate, and little around her was any different to anything she could have witnessed there: the sunshine slanting between the wooden bars of the open window, the smell of wood smoke and baking from the bread oven, the sound of someone chopping logs and a cockerel crowing, the rustle of rushes under her feet as she moved over the packed earth floor. Their City of Raleigh was a piece of England entire. She almost sang out loud:
Greensleeves was all my joy,
Greensleeves was my delight;
Greensleeves was my heart of gold,
And who but my Lady Greensleeves.
Th
en she realised she might disturb Governor White and she carried on working as quietly as she could, sweeping carefully around the knick-knacks stored under the trestle table at which he was bent over another painting. There were gourds and pieces of coral strewn haphazardly around the struts, along with twigs, bones and feathers, a sloughed snakeskin and large pink-and-white scallop shells, the stump of a beeswax candle and bits of material crumbling to what might have been charcoal and chalk. She bent down and attempted to push together the collection into a neater pile against the wall, then stood up quickly when a large yellow and black spider crawled from the heap. The creature scurried over a stick that had a tooth fixed to one end, polished and bound with waxed thread. She retrieved this and placed it with the brushes and quills on the table.
The Governor did not look up. His hand moved over the paper, to his water-shell and oyster palette and back to the page on which he was working. She carried on brushing around his feet with the broom, and wondered whether pretty yellow-flowered broom would one day grow in Virginia. She could imagine it blooming on the sandy soil round about. Would the people who came after her ever miss things that could never be brought over? Deep snow, perhaps, and stone churches. There was no stone on the island; their church would have to be built from timber and daub. There would be no headstone for George Howe.
‘Greensleeves’ faded from her mind.
Governor White stretched out his hand to his palette again and a pencil of black lead fell from the boards, breaking into pieces as it hit the floor.
‘God’s blood!’ he muttered.
She stooped to pick up the fragments then saw him looking at her.
‘Oh, it’s you.’ He sighed and gestured to the clutter around him. ‘Forgive me. This table isn’t big enough.’
‘If you will allow me,’ she said, and stacked up all the loose brushes, quills and pencils into a large leather jug that she placed on the clearer surface, giving it a brisk wipe beforehand. By the jug was a small bunch of freshly picked blue flowers just beginning to show signs of wilt.
