Tidewater: A Novel of Pocahontas and the Jamestown Colony

by Libbie Hawker

  “All right,” Smith broke in. “That’s enough. And so I am to stand trial for George Classen’s death. A man who chose to walk into an obvious trap, a man who chose to get himself killed.”

  Baker nodded miserably. “And the other two. They followed you; that’s what Ratcliffe said. You took them upriver, and that’s what got them killed. The savages brought their bodies onto the strand, after . . . after Classen . . . We couldn’t do nothing about it, about Classen or the bodies. He’d taken our landing boat ashore, and we weren’t anchored within range of our guns.”

  “The guns,” Smith said, clutched by a sudden, desperate fear. He seized Baker by the shoulders. “Tell me you weren’t foolish enough to fire on them.”

  “A time or two,” he admitted.

  Smith cursed elaborately. Baker blushed at the vileness of his words.

  “Don’t you see,” Smith said, “they know now—they know how far our guns can fire. They know a safe distance, that our weapons have limits.”

  Baker shook his head like a bear beset by wasps. No, of course this great oaf didn’t understand. Of course he did not see how they had revealed their weakness to the naturals. No one saw, no one understood how to navigate this violent, fearful place, save for Smith. And now they would try him—and execute him, he had no doubt—for the foolishness of other men.

  Smith turned away.

  “You’re not to go anywhere,” Baker said apologetically. “Ratcliffe’s orders.”

  “Fuck Ratcliffe. I need a piss.”

  He eschewed the usual places and pulled down the front of his trousers against the palisade wall. It was a vindication, if a small one, to watch his piss darkening the very bones of the fort, to watch the steam rise like a banner of defiance into the morning air. By the time he had tucked himself away, Ratcliffe was there, watching Smith with that flat, unfeeling gaze, with all the warmth of a viper watching a mouse in the underbrush.

  They wrapped Smith’s wrists in a length of rope and stood him before the men of the fort. It was a ragged bunch, less than half the number who had first landed. They ranged in a sickle in the center of Jamestown, staring at him with eyes haunted by cold and hunger. They were thin as stray dogs, and just as quick to snarl and bite.

  Ratcliffe read off the charges in a ringing, pompous voice that would have done Edward-Maria Wingfield proud. Negligence, resulting in the deaths of three good men. At least it’s not to be mutiny this time, thought Smith.

  Smith watched Ratcliffe’s steady pacing, the hands clasped behind his back, a gesture of thoughtfulness, not of strut.

  “I thought you were a better man,” Smith said when the president had finished reciting the charges. Ratcliffe turned slowly to regard him, a cold stare in the cold morning, like ice on the river. “You respected me.”

  “Aye,” Ratcliffe said, “I did, well enough. But you reached beyond your place, John Smith. You lost caution. If you ever had a shred of caution to begin with. And now three men are dead. Shall we simply leave that lie?”

  “I didn’t kill them. Many more than three are dead. Will you stand the naturals on trial, too? Make them answer for all the men they’ve slain?”

  “When we capture some, we certainly shall try them. And make them pay for their crimes.”

  A few men rumbled their agreement.

  “And what crime am I to die for?” Smith shouted. “The crime of being common? The crime of exceeding my place, of doing what you lot cannot or will not do? You’ve been waiting all this time, Ratcliffe—waiting for a chance to be rid of me.” He swept his hard gaze over the crowd, taking them all in, accusing them all of Ratcliffe’s madness. “You fools! You’re out of your senses. You’re desperate. You allow hunger to rule your minds and your hearts. You aren’t dealing out justice, you’re starving . . . and killing me won’t fill your bellies.”

  Ratcliffe moved very close. A sour stink rose from him, of old wool and mud, of fitful sleep and pervasive fear.

  “John Smith, I find you guilty of all charges.”

  “How convenient for you.”

  “Take him to the top of the watchtower,” Ratcliffe barked, “and hang him.”

  The men surged forward, some of them shouting against Ratcliffe’s order, calling for justice, but far more were too glad to seize Smith by the arms and frog-march him toward the nearest tower. Ratcliffe ascended the ladder with an easy grace that was incongruous with his bony, pale form. Smith climbed with greater difficulty, scrabbling with his tied hands, pushed and supported from below by a mob of hungry men. A length of rough rope passed from hand to hand and wound itself like Eden’s serpent around the railing of the watchtower. Smith jerked his body out of the grasp of the men who held him. The sad remains of the colony stared up at him from far below, gaunt, pale faces with deep-black pits for eyes. Their mouths moved—in cheers or in cries of defiance—he could not tell the difference. There was a ringing in his ears like axe blows, and he could not make out the words.

  A noose dropped over his head. It was heavy as a bearskin on his shoulders. He remembered the slight weight of the little girl falling over him, her oily, herbal smell, the frail body shielding his own from harm.

  She was not here to save him now.

  A few wet droplets struck his cheeks, so cold they burned: tiny flakes of snow falling into the hair of the men who surrounded him, Ratcliffe’s bulldogs. It dusted the matted wool of their shoulders.

  From far below, the roll of a drum sounded. A nice formality, he thought with giddy wryness. He caught sight of Matthew Scrivener, pale-faced and tight-lipped, watching in wordless anger.

  The shouts fell silent.

  “John Smith,” Ratcliffe boomed, “for the crime of causing the deaths of George Classen, Jehu Robinson, and Thomas Emry, I do sentence you to hang by the neck until dead.”

  The bark of the last word hung in the air, but in the silence that followed on its clipped heels, Smith heard a rush, a hollow, deep-bellied flapping—the furling of a sail. He turned to stare frantically at the river. Ratcliffe, too, turned, and gaped at the sight. Through the obscuring blur of falling snow, the stark black hull of a ship turned in the current toward land. Men moved in the rigging, small and jerky as puppets, securing the sail as it dropped against the slash of the boom. Through the growing flurry, in a dreamlike trance of disbelief, Smith read the letters emblazoned below the rail. “Susan Constant.”

  “Ahoy!” A familiar voice carried across the frozen spit.

  Christ the redeemer, Smith prayed in a hot rush of passion and gratitude, it’s Captain Newport.

  He raised his voice to the men below. It was hoarse, constricted with the force of his sudden relief, but it carried. “Newport! Newport has returned! Food, men! He has food!”

  “You are the luckiest man or beast God ever created,” Scrivener said, passing a chipped cup of wine to Smith.

  Smith noted with amusement that it was the same old porcelain cup Bartholomew Gosnold had used, back when he’d been counted among the living.

  “The timing of Newport’s arrival was nearly too much to be believed,” Scrivener added.

  Their work for the day was finished: roofs patched against the intermittent fall of snow, planks laid across patches of icy mud, rents in old clothing mended with new yarn from the stock of supplies Newport had brought from England. A diluted sunset pinked the western horizon, a fitful shimmer through the tops of bare trees. A dense bank of cloud was tinted with rose, stooping toward the muted, slumbering earth with its burden of snow.

  The sky promised another icy night with a frigid day to follow, but it was pleasant enough to huddle around the communal fire. Newport had managed to bring a few pigs from the distant home shore; one boar that had grown sickly on the voyage was now roasting on a spit, dropping his fragrant fats into the blaze with a patter and sizzle. A copper kettle was nestled among the orange coals, the bright glow
of its belly slowly darkening in the fire. Bits of hearty carrot and turnip rose on the current of the boil, flashing bright as candles in the gathering dusk, and sank again into the depths of a rich-scented stew. The arrival of the supply ship was a miracle so great it seemed nearly beyond the workings of Christ. They would have food now, food and strength and security, stomachs full enough to stave off the demons that drove men to such pointless outrages as vengeful hangings.

  Smith sipped gratefully at his hot spiced wine—the first he’d enjoyed in months. It was poor stuff, no doubt, for the Virginia Company had spared every expense it could, and even if they watered the barrels with half the James River, the supply of wine would certainly not last until the arrival of the next ship, due in late spring. But after months of cold water and thin, savorless broth, and following as it did on the heels of his thwarted hanging, the wine tasted as good as any King James himself might enjoy.

  “That was the second time in a handful of days I’ve given death the slip,” Smith said. He related the story of his capture to Matthew Scrivener. The man was always a patient listener, always ready to accept an account from a man he trusted, no matter how unlikely the tale. Scrivener rocked with laughter at the description of the daughter of the great king, risking the men’s clubs to save Smith as her own pet. “In the days since I’ve been back,” Smith said—in the days since Ratcliffe tried to kill me—“I haven’t told another soul that tale. What’s the use? Nobody would believe it.”

  “It does somewhat defy imagination,” Scrivener said, but he was chuckling over the rim of his cup. “An Indian princess enchanted by John Smith.”

  The girl was not enchanted by him—Smith had no doubt of that. She was too young for such thoughts. The snub of her nose and the puppy roundness of her face told her age well enough, even if her body was hidden beneath that shabby white cloak. But beyond her age, he’d sensed an air of calculation in her actions. Smith did not quite understand it, but when the girl looked at him, it was with the gleam of a plot in her eyes, not the heat of infatuation. But it hardly mattered that he did not understand her motives. He was alive.

  “I wonder if I shall see her again,” he mused.

  “Hup, men.” William Baker arrived with a length of wood balanced on his ox shoulder. They edged aside to give him room to toss the log onto the fire. A great shower of sparks erupted, wreathing the roast pig in tiny gems, crackling as loud as the Indian priests’ rattles. Baker threw a quick, shamefaced glance in Smith’s direction, and then lumbered away.

  “That one wanted me dead,” Smith said.

  “Baker? Never. He’s a good enough sort.”

  “He’s Ratcliffe’s man. That much is clear.”

  “Men don’t know whose they are from one day to the next. It was the hunger that did it to them, Smith.”

  “Ratcliffe still gives me looks full of murder. He slinks about like a shadow, those sly little eyes of his watching me . . . always watching.”

  “He cannot touch you. Not anymore—not now that we have food. The men will never stand for it. Men are sensible when they’re not starving.”

  There were plenty of men at Jamestown now, too. Newport had brought a full shipload of hopefuls to the colony. Fresh men to shoulder some of the load, to share the burden. They were well fed, or looked to be by comparison with the more established colonists. Stand a lad who had just made an ocean crossing in the dead of winter beside a starving colonist, and it was the only time you might rightfully call a straw-thin sailor well fed.

  A wind howled over the edge of the palisade, blowing a scatter of icy crystals down among the trampled grounds.

  “Cold night,” Scrivener muttered.

  The wind picked up, flattening the flames against the ground. The shape of the spitted hog dimmed and receded in the sudden loss of light. Smith set Gosnold’s old porcelain cup on the ground and pulled his cloak tight about his body. In that moment, a log on the fire gave an enormous crack; a gout of flame leaped from the log’s heart, trailed by a streak of sparks. Smith and Scrivener jumped back from the fire. They watched, holding their breath, as the sparks drifted across the cold blackness of the grounds and settled among the damp thatch of the storehouse’s roof.

  No, Smith thought, his mouth suddenly dry. Let it be too wet, merciful Christ.

  Nothing happened for a long moment. The wind died back, and the fire returned to a steady, tame blaze. The pig sizzled. Scrivener drew in a shaky breath as if to speak, and then halted.

  Smith saw it, too: a ruddy glow suffusing through the thatch, thick pale smoke rising. He shouted, “Fire!”

  Men came stumbling from their huts, pulling cloaks about them. The night erupted with cries.

  “Buckets! Open the gates! To the river, men! Bring water!”

  By the time a chain of buckets passed hand to hand, down to the river and back again, the storehouse was well ablaze. Oily smoke filled eyes and nostrils, tasting of burnt wool and wheat. Men clambered atop the nearest cabins, beating out sparks and tiny licks of flame with wet blankets. They flung water at the storehouse, sending up spurts of steam to mingle with the terrible black smoke, but it was useless. The blaze burned too hot, fueled by the new kegs of oil and the well-tended dry goods inside. The men worked with a fearful energy, the lot of them shivering with a feeling that was near panic. But it was no use. After hours of hopeless battle, the storehouse burned itself out, nothing but a heap of ashes among a few smoldering twigs that had once been stout beams.

  Gone. All of it gone. Their hope, their salvation. Even the roasted pig and the stew had burned up, forgotten in the madness of the blaze. As a weak dawn rose trembling over Jamestown, Smith stood, hollowed by exhaustion and despair, staring at white shards lying splintered against the frozen black earth. Even his cup of wine was lost, trampled in the panic of the night.

  God almighty, do you want us to starve? He peered up into a dense shelf of cloud filling with morning light. The brightness of it brought a thin water to his eyes. No food to stop them . . . Ratcliffe will hang me all over again. And nothing to save my hide a third time. It’s too much to hope for, that I’ll be spared again.

  He staggered to his cabin and fell onto his bed. The interior was choking with the pungent, thick smell of burnt wool. With nothing to hope for and everything to fear, John Smith stumbled into a deep, dragging sleep.

  It was a dream that woke him.

  He stood on a path in the forest, a luminous cobalt trail that wound among trees the color of twilight, deep blue and smoky violet. Somewhere along the stretch of the trail, in the undergrowth smelling of singed wool and watered wine, he heard a child’s voice calling to him.

  Very small king.

  He gasped as he awoke. Light leaked through the cracks around his door. He had tossed away his blanket in sleep, and now his body was stiff with cold. He lay shivering on his pallet, clinging to the threads of the dream. One by one the blue-violet trees dissipated before the eye of memory. The child’s voice faded.

  Gradually he became aware of murmuring outside, a busy sound of suspicion and wonder.

  “King,” Ratcliffe’s voice called, clear and demanding, rising above the greater hum of so many men. “What does she mean, king?”

  She.

  Smith lurched from bed and threw his door wide, kicking at the blanket that had tangled around his ankle.

  The communal fire pit was black and cold. A sluggish breeze stirred, lifting an eddy of greasy ash from the ruin of the storehouse. Men pressed around the gate, which was flung open, though Smith could not see who stood on the other side. The crowd moved with a tense, bobbing excitement. He scuttled forward, sliding between thin bodies, the worn fabric of their garments full of the smell of fire. The faces in the crowd were alight with hope and hunger.

  Ratcliffe again. “What does she mean, king?”

  Smith shouldered to the front.

 
The girl stood in the very center of the gateway, the frayed white cape held snug beneath her chin, face framed in a wreath of pale feathers. Ratcliffe was planted in front of the child, challenging her with his height and his flat, serpentine stare. The child ignored him, gazing calmly down at the ground, refusing, politely but firmly, to acknowledge Ratcliffe’s authority.

  Somebody murmured a greeting: “Ho, Smith,” and Pocahontas glanced up at the sound of his name. The dark, almond-slanted eyes hid themselves for a moment behind lowered lids, a slow blink of satisfaction.

  “That one,” the child said. A small hand emerged from her cape to point in Smith’s direction. Her accented English stirred another ripple of excitement among the men of the colony.

  “Good God,” Ratcliffe scoffed. “She thinks John Smith is the king?”

  A few men chuckled. One hissed.

  Smith slipped forward to Ratcliffe’s side. The president withdrew slightly, not out of deference but from distaste at Smith’s nearness.

  “Pocahontas.”

  “Wingapoh, Chawnzmit.”

  “Why are you here?” He said it in her tongue, unwilling to allow Ratcliffe any part of the conversation.

  She tilted her face, gave a small, slow grin, foxlike and sly. “I said I would come, and we would speak.” She paused a moment, then sniffed the air ostentatiously. “You had a fire.”

  “Yes. Last night.”

  “We smelled it.”

  “All the way to Werowocomoco?”

  Ratcliffe threw up his hands. “Speak English, man. Or have the good grace to translate.”

  Both Smith and Pocahontas ignored him.

  “Our scouts smelled it,” she said, “and ran to my father’s longhouse.”

  “So there are scouts still in the woods around us, watching.”

  Pocahontas smiled serenely. “The house where you put your things, the things from the big boat. That is the house that burned.”