Tidewater: A Novel of Pocahontas and the Jamestown Colony

by Libbie Hawker

  Then why this pressing, instinctive worry?

  A moment before the men rounded a bend in the path, Pocahontas realized what it was she feared. Unfamiliar voices rose in a strange, round-soft, songlike tongue, speaking words she did not know. The timbre of their words was pleading. They were afraid, that much she could tell. Half a heartbeat before they marched into view, she smelled them: pungent, salty, and sharp, musky like an animal hide, not at all pleasant. The odor was strong enough to cut through the smell of the drying rack.

  Tassantassas.

  There were two of them, hemmed in by a guard of Real People, warriors who walked with knives and hatchets ready in case the white men should try to escape—or attack. They didn’t look capable of an attack, though. They were thin. Through their bushy beards she could see how the bones of their faces pressed sharp as broken flint against thin, pale skin. They moved with a defeated hunch, a stumbling weakness that spoke of ill health, and their eyes were dull with long hunger.

  With a start, Pocahontas realized that the man who led the tassantassas, who directed them with prods and pokes from his bow, was her half brother Naukaquawis.

  He will take them to Powhatan.

  Pocahontas waited until the bedraggled white men shambled past. Then she slipped from her hiding place and followed them silently through the lanes of Werowocomoco, to the great house of the Chief of Chiefs.

  By the time the party arrived at Powhatan’s yehakin, word had spread through the town that the young warrior Naukaquawis had apprehended a pair of white men. Women dropped their work and thronged on either side of the wide central lane that ran past the communal fire pit, drawing into clusters of three or four, whispering and staring. Children bounced and sidled to within a few paces of the bewildered tassantassas, daring one another to touch the pale, hairy creatures before the warriors drove them off with lazy flicks of their bows.

  Pocahontas threaded her way through the watching crowd, struggling to reach Powhatan’s lodge before the tassantassas did. Powhatan’s wives made a frantic commotion, scrambling into the great house to scrape together a suitably impressive array of foods and fineries to impress and intimidate the strangers. They cursed as they ran, clicking their tongues as they brushed dirt from one another’s faces and tucked ornaments into glossy black hair.

  Pocahontas hesitated in the clearing outside the great house. The clearing was as lively as an ant heap, and the tassantassas were only a few steps behind. She glanced quickly about; the guard was at the door, the same young warrior who had chided and mocked her the time she’d sought admittance at Powhatan’s council. The guard’s smooth brown skin was unmarred, the bruises from his huskanaw long gone, but his eyes were as keen as ever. She had no illusions that he would be friendlier today.

  A young wife, nearly wailing with anxiety, rushed past clutching a long-necked gourd full of nut milk. Pocahontas snatched the gourd from the wife, who let out a piercing shriek, and then ran full tilt toward the door flap.

  The guard’s eyes widened. She gritted her teeth as she ran, silently daring him to remain where he was. A heartbeat before she would have collided with him, cracking the gourd and sending nut milk spewing across the clearing, he stepped to the side. Pocahontas’s body punched against the door flap. It held just long enough for her feet to lift from the earth and paddle helplessly in the air. Then it collapsed inward and she skidded on her knees into Powhatan’s great house. The guard shouted a curse from the doorway. Nut milk had sloshed from the gourd onto her face and she wiped herself clean with a corner of her cloak. Then she turned to grin up at him.

  “You ought to be beaten for this,” he snarled.

  “I won’t be. Don’t you know who I am?”

  “Some Pamunkey whelp with no manners.” He scowled at her from the other side of the doorway, tugging at the flap until the thick hide lay straight again on its wooden frame. “And you nearly broke Powhatan’s door.”

  “I’m Amonute, the mamanatowick’s favorite daughter.”

  He squinted at her. “The one they call Mischief—is that you? I can see you’re well named, you wicked crow of a girl.”

  She stood, then brushed the dirt from the knees of her leggings. “And who are you, to speak to me in such a manner?”

  “Don’t put on airs,” he said harshly. “I know you’re no high-blood daughter. My name is Kocoum, not that it’s any concern of yours.”

  The flap closed briefly, dimming the evening glow. Then Kocoum’s head and shoulders appeared again, quick as a mole peeking from its burrow. “The tassantassas are here! Move aside!”

  She pressed herself against the wall, hiding in the shadow and the folds of her cloak.

  She could hear the tassantassas pausing and shuffling before ducking through the doorway. She sensed fear in their hesitation. Then the smell of them filled the hall, forceful and thick. They stood blinking in the interior gloom, their eyes pale as autumn leaves and stained by dark-purple pits.

  Naukaquawis laid a hand on one man’s shoulder and he shied like an ambushed deer, his feet drumming like panicked hooves, his body heaving. He would have run, had he not been hemmed in by the walls of Powhatan’s great house. Naukaquawis made soothing gestures and motioned down the length of the hall, indicating that they should walk. The heart fire pulsed in the depths of the lodge like a brooding heart. When they had moved down the great central aisle in their shuffling, sick-bear gait, Pocahontas slid from her cover of shadows to follow.

  Powhatan was waiting like a dark god on his high bedstead, mantled in firelight and silence. The hot glow intensified the hardness of his face and sharpened his features, exaggerating him so that his fierce countenance seemed to leap from his surroundings, stark and forceful as a ceremony mask. Even Pocahontas, for whom Powhatan always had a smile and a fond word, felt a twinge of awe. The tassantassas shook where they stood beside the fire.

  “What did you bring me?” he asked of Naukaquawis.

  “I found these two near the river. Or rather, they found me.”

  Powhatan stared at the white men. His eyes were two glimmers of black in a copper sky, like stars reversed; and like stars, they were distant and inscrutable.

  “What do you want?” he asked the tassantassas. “Why are you here?”

  They seemed to know that the Great Chief spoke to them, for they glanced uneasily at one another and shifted on the stiff soles of their worn, dark moccasins. But they made no reply.

  “They don’t understand you, Father,” said Naukaquawis.

  “I have heard that the tassantassas can speak the Real Tongue in trade.”

  “Only the one with the yellow beard—Chawnzmit.”

  Powhatan grunted.

  Naukaquawis made a few hand signs, palm open, head tilted quizzically, brows raised. One of the tassantassas, the taller of the two, seemed to draw himself up. His eyes sparked with sudden understanding. He gestured back: first touching his own chest and his companion’s, then the thin hand arcing through the air, a simulation of tossing something away. He pressed a hand to his middle, and his face looked haunted, desperate—sad.

  Powhatan and Naukaquawis exchanged uncertain glances.

  The tassantassa lifted one hand as if it cupped water and raised the other perpendicular, spread wide; the pale hands traveled together, moving away from his body, pressing onward until his arms reached to their fullest extent. Then the fingers spread, separated; the palms turned outward, drifting away.

  Naukaquawis shook his head. “I don’t know . . .”

  Pocahontas rushed into the ring of firelight before she quite knew what she was doing, or why. She still held the gourd full of nut milk. Powhatan looked down at her, surprise cracking the stern lines of his mask.

  “They ran from their town,” she blurted.

  “Get out, Amonute.” Naukaquawis scuffed his moccasin in the earth, kicking an invisible stone at h
is lowborn little sister.

  She set the gourd on the earthen floor and repeated the tassantassa’s gesture, the arcing toss. “Away,” she said. “They ran far away.”

  “Go on,” Powhatan said slowly. His eyes were on the tassantassas.

  She squinted up at the tall one, trying to recall every movement, the placement of each bony bird-claw finger. She mimicked the cupping of his hands, the pressing out and away.

  What does it mean?

  Her arms extended fully, and like the white man, she allowed her fingers to spread, her palms to separate . . . allowed the unseen object she had held to disappear into the air.

  Disappear. Of course. The cupped hands were like a boat, moving swiftly across the vast ocean.

  “Some of them took a boat and went across the sea,” she said. “But they never came back.” She pressed a hand to her stomach. “And now . . . they are starving.”

  “Anyone can see they are starving,” Naukaquawis muttered.

  “But some have gone back over the sea,” Powhatan said in a low, musing tone. “You are sure that’s what he meant, Amonute?”

  She was sure of nothing, but standing in the light of her father’s approval, a thrill of triumph warm as licking flames filled her chest. She nodded.

  The tall one made his hand signs again. He made imploring motions toward Powhatan, mimed eating, made curious bows from the waist, and touched his forehead. Again the signs for eating, and again the bows.

  “He is begging,” Naukaquawis said, disgust tinting his voice.

  “No,” said Pocahontas. There was nothing pleading in the man’s manner. It was respect he showed, and something akin to thanks. “He knows it was you who gave the tassantassas food, Father, in the summertime. He thanks you for it.”

  Powhatan leaned back slightly, eyes narrowing, a dignified acceptance.

  Now the white man made fearsome motions, the drawing of a bow, the grimace of a warrior’s face. He held up a hand as if halting his own aggression. And again, the strange, vehement bowing.

  Pocahontas saw the meaning at once. “He thanks you for stopping the Real People from attacking the fort.”

  Powhatan chuckled deep in his chest. “Our trick with the Paspaheghs and the Quiyo-co-hannocks,” he said to Naukaquawis. “I told Opechancanough it was a good plan.”

  The tassantassa went on gesturing and bowing. Pocahontas watched carefully, feeling the man’s movements in her own small frame, sensing his desperation in her spirit, understanding.

  “He throws himself on your mercy. He begs help from the mamanatowick, for without your assistance, all of the white men will die.”

  Naukaquawis and Powhatan locked eyes for a long moment. The heart fire snapped and muttered in the silence. At last the mamanatowick seemed to come to a decision. He nodded slowly, thoughtfully, his eyes staring into the deep, swift current of his own thoughts. He called for one of his wives, who came at once, smoothing her painted apron over bare thighs.

  “Bring food for these men. Naukaquawis, find me a man who has traded often with the tassantassas.”

  “That will be difficult, with so many off at the hunt.”

  “But there must be someone still in Werowocomoco. Find him and bring him to me. I need a man who has enough of their language to make my intentions clear—to make my offer clear.”

  “Offer, Father?”

  “An offer I am certain starving men will not refuse: I will give these two food if they will give me information. I want information about their kind. Why they are here, what they intend, how many died, how weak they are.”

  Naukaquawis crossed his arms over his broad chest. “I suppose they will give what you seek, and willingly. I’ve seen squirrel carcasses picked clean by crows with more meat on their bones than these two have between them.”

  “But I want more knowledge from them than what we can gather in a few days’ time, my son. The other tassantassas will come looking for these men, starving or not. They are a suspicious, untrusting people. We need more than hand signs. We must learn their tongue.”

  Naukaquawis shrugged. “I suppose I can . . .”

  “Not you,” Powhatan said, raising a hand to stop him. “You are needed on the hunt. Our winter caches are too low already. This winter we can’t spare a hunter as skilled as you.”

  Naukaquawis’s chest swelled with pride. “When the hunt is finished, then.”

  “They will come looking for their runaways long before then. We have perhaps two weeks’ time to learn all we can. After that, I shall move them to a distant town to keep them out of the way of their own people. In the meantime, the task of learning will be yours, Amonute.”

  A jolt of excitement ran through her body, stiffening her spine so suddenly that her neck twinged with pain. “Mine?”

  “You have shown aptitude for it this day. In truth, I never thought to see such focus and wisdom in you. I am pleased.”

  Pocahontas felt as though her welling spirit would burst right through her skin. “Thank you, Father,” she said as humbly as she could manage.

  “You must be aware of how important this task is, child. Much depends on it.”

  “I won’t disappoint you.”

  Naukaquawis snorted. “Why entrust work so crucial to a girl?”

  “The tassantassas will not fear her, for one thing,” Powhatan said. “They will open up to her, answer any question she asks. They are not Real People, but they are not stupid, either. Do you suppose they will spill their secrets to a warrior?”

  Reluctantly, Naukaquawis subsided, and shook his braided knot. “Do as you think best, if you believe you can trust men like these with your precious daughter.”

  “I will give her a guard.”

  “Not I. I am needed on the hunt,” Naukaquawis said with a petulant twist of his mouth.

  “My door guard, Kocoum. He has sworn to my service until cattapeuk. He was to remain in Werowocomoco during the hunt. He will do nicely.”

  Pocahontas stifled a groan.

  A handful of wives brought baskets of dumplings and turtle shells brimming with hot mix-pot stew. The tassantassas descended on the food like feral dogs, stuffing their mouths with both hands, not even pausing to clean the thick dribbles of stew from their wiry beards. Pocahontas watched them with raised eyebrows. These white men were creatures apart; there was no mistaking it. But the fast throb of triumph still raced through her limbs. Powhatan had given her a task—an important task, one for a trusted and respected daughter. It was more than sorting chestnuts, more than baking bread or weaving mats. It was work fit for a girl of high blood.

  If she did the job well, she would make herself indispensable to Powhatan. She would gain a permanent place at the mamanatowick’s side. She would have influence. She would be more than a lowborn castoff.

  And then it wouldn’t matter one bit whether Matachanna or anyone else disliked her.

  She was so eager for the task, she didn’t even mind the prospect of spending her days in Kocoum’s company.

  The next morning, while the sunlight still played among the fiery leaves of the canopy, Pocahontas led the tassantassas to their lessons. They followed her meekly as she strode through the lanes of Werowocomoco, as confident as any chief. Behind the tassantassas, Kocoum stalked like a hunting wolf, silent and alert. His hand never strayed far from his knife, and his face was so full of stern mistrust that his large ears almost lost their comical appearance.

  Pocahontas chose the yard of her own yehakin to teach the men. There were so many more things to see outdoors, more words to test and exchange. And she relished the look of shock on Matachanna’s face when she emerged from the longhouse with her nut-gathering basket, gaping at the two white men who crouched beside the fire pit.

  “What is the meaning of this?” Matachanna cried, shrinking back against the longhouse wall and clutching her bask
et to her chest like a warrior’s shield.

  “My task,” Pocahontas said loftily. “Father gave it to me alone. I’m to learn the tassantassa tongue.”

  Matachanna tore her eyes from the white men to glance at Kocoum. Kocoum returned her disbelieving look with a slow shrug and a wry twist of his mouth.

  “Must you do it here? What if they try to steal from our yehakin?”

  “Kocoum is to be my guard. He won’t allow anything to happen to our longhouse—or to me, and thank you for your concern for my well-being.” Pocahontas couldn’t resist driving the thorn into Matachanna’s flesh. “That’s right—I have a guard. I, who was once given as handmaid to another girl!”

  Matachanna leveled a dry look at Pocahontas. She never had learned to get along with Nonoma, and eventually Winganuske had entrusted the younger girl to a different child’s care. Pocahontas was pleased to be rid of the chore, but she never had gotten over the sting of being given as a servant to another.

  Kocoum stepped forward and tugged sharply on Pocahontas’s braid. Her face heated with fury.

  “Don’t swell up to the size of a sturgeon,” he warned. “You’re still a low-blood child. And I only have to protect you—I’m not your handmaid. Mischief.”

  Matachanna frowned. “Don’t let these crows into the longhouse, Kocoum. Please.”

  “I won’t let them in,” Pocahontas insisted. “Now leave us be, Sister. You have nuts to gather, and I have a great duty to the mamanatowick. We both have work to do.”

  When Matachanna had stamped away, muttering about girls with too much ambition, Pocahontas turned to the tassantassas. They had been well fed throughout the night, and now that they understood they would not be killed, much of the fear and strain had left their eyes. They looked around, peering curiously at the yehakin that clustered beneath shady mulberry trees and the women and children who gathered at the edges of yards to stare back with equal curiosity.