Tidewater: A Novel of Pocahontas and the Jamestown Colony

by Libbie Hawker

  The skin at the nape of Smith’s neck prickled and crawled. Indians watching unseen from the woodland were unsettling enough, but they must have been watching from the treetops or pressed against the palisade wall, to know where the colony had stored the ship’s goods. Ratcliffe, be glad I keep you ignorant, you prancing fool.

  “Yes,” he admitted. “We have no food now. All of it is gone.”

  She nodded. “As my father suspected.”

  She turned abruptly and whistled, a perfect imitation of the high piping call of some local bird. Soon the men of the fort drew back, gasping and muttering, as a stream of naturals emerged from the wiry undergrowth at the river’s edge. Smith had not even seen their canoes; they must have been well hidden, lying low beneath the winter brush. Men and women alike came, a score or more, bearing baskets piled high with dried corn, grass-woven sacks heavy with beans, freshly killed turkeys strung up by their feet. The colonists divided, forming an avenue of amazed stares and welcoming praises. A few dropped to their knees on the frozen earth and prayed aloud.

  Pocahontas stood still as the stream of salvation flowed around her. She looked up into John Smith’s face, her lips curved in a tiny, triumphant smile. “Here is food,” she said offhand, as if she had not just saved them all from a slow and certain death. “Powhatan is good. He cares for his children, and you are his now, tanx-werowance. You are tanx to his son Naukaquawis, and you are my brother. I claimed you. I took you away from death.”

  “I know,” Smith muttered, bewildered.

  She took his hand. Hers was small and warm, and he could not help but smile at her confident and friendly touch. “Then come, Chawnzmit. It is time for us to speak.”

  They sat together on one of the flat-topped logs surrounding the cold fire pit, conversing as the gifts of corn and birds and dried fish were offered and tabulated. Scrivener took charge of the goods, designating a new cabin as the storehouse, directing the flow of baskets and sacks, and bowing to every natural who passed him. Smith watched in amazement until Pocahontas tapped him briskly on the knee.

  She pulled the chain of beads from the neck of her cloak and held it up in her slender fingers. Her face was stern with concentration. “Roanoke,” she said.

  Smith knew the game by now; he had played it often enough with naturals on his trading expeditions. “Beads,” he said in English. “Shell beads.”

  She nodded her approval. Testing him: she already knew these English words.

  They worked at their task as the food came in, stringing phrases together from stray, half-understood words, threading sentences like broken necklaces. Pocahontas giggled every time she corrected his speech, shaking her head until the braid hanging down her back swung, full of a child’s lighthearted sport. Soon he was laughing, too, showing her the difference between The beads are yellow and The beads are sunshine with gestures and his poor fragments of Indian words.

  “A strange pair we make,” he told her, and she smiled, agreeing.

  Two days later she returned, again with an escort of men and women bearing more stock for the new supply house. Again they conversed, testing the boundaries of each language, both of them delighting in the joy of new and shared knowledge. Pocahontas visited the fort so regularly the men of Jamestown began to speak of her with reverence, as if she were an angel wrapped in her ragged white wings. At the approach of her canoe, the guards on duty in the watchtower would call out joyously, “The princess! The princess has come!”

  The snows of winter deepened, piling against the palisade walls, crusting with sharp points of ice that broke the skin of men’s legs when they sank into drifts over their boot-tops. The cabins of Jamestown were rounded by snowfall. Within the boundaries of the palisade, the snow stained to gray and less appealing shades, then renewed itself in white as storms rolled up the length of the great river. In time it reverted to its sickly colors again, tramped beneath the weary feet of the colonists.

  The men of Jamestown were weary, but they were not hungry. As their stores depleted, Pocahontas came again, bearing her gifts and greetings from her father. The most precious gift of all she gave to John Smith alone: knowledge of her people’s language, of their customs and ways.

  Many times he would watch her face puzzling over a new phrase, the black brows knitting with her familiar furrow of concentration, and he would wonder guiltily whether she understood all that she gave away. Did her father expect this? Did he send this little ambassador freely, knowing that his new, pale-skinned tanx-werowance must be extracting from her the secrets of the Real People, things the king would rather the English did not know? Was it a trade Powhatan was willing to make, for some terrible payment he had yet to demand? Or was he as innocent in the matter as his daughter?

  As winter thawed at last into a gray, wet spring, Smith’s guilt deepened, for he had come to like the girl immensely. There was a familiar spark in her soul, a flame of arrogant defiance that burned kindred to his own. Her great intelligence was obvious to anyone who glanced her way. It shone from her face, a torch of confident understanding that could not be extinguished. Not so obvious to the casual observer was her ambition. She was possessed of a desire for power so great it might put to shame the Roman emperors of old. Such ambition in a little girl would have been comical, if Pocahontas were not so charming and delightful. Instead, it seemed as natural to her as were feathers to a bird or scales to a fish.

  She had confessed her ambition to him once, when she finally understood the meaning of the English word princess.

  “A princess is the daughter of a king,” Smith had explained.

  “I am that.” Pocahontas nodded in solemn agreement.

  “A princess is valuable. A princess marries a great man, gives birth to sons of great standing. Her sons become kings. She is respected, cherished by the people.”

  The girl’s face had fallen. The sorrow that came over her lively, expressive features took Smith aback. “I am not that,” she said emphatically. “Not a princess.”

  “No? But you are the great king’s daughter.”

  She had explained then, with obvious chagrin and palpable longing, her place in the world.

  “I’m a commoner, too,” Smith told her, his chest welling with kinship for the child. He had a sudden urge to fold her in a brotherly embrace, to offer this small creature some shelter against all the terrible unfairness in the world. Instead he sat up straighter, gazing stoically out over the sharp tops of the palisade. “I can never rise above my station, though God knows I have greater worth.”

  Pocahontas peered up at him. “But you are tanx-werowance. That is better than a common man.”

  “Only to the Real People. The English, the tassantassas . . . my people see me as low and uncouth.”

  She tested the new word. “Uncouth?”

  He smiled in spite of his turbulent emotions. “Not a gentleman.”

  “I am not a gentleman, too.”

  “No—for a girl, we wouldn’t say gentleman. We would say lady.”

  “I am not a lady. I am uncouth. But you can be called tanx-werowance by Chief Powhatan. You can be given greatness because you are brave and wise.”

  “Can you not be called a lady? Does your father not have that power?”

  She sighed. “Perhaps my father might lift me up. I might rise as high as werowansqua—lady-king.”

  “Queen,” Smith said, hiding his chuckle.

  She nodded distractedly, as if she already knew the word, though Smith had never heard her speak it. The girl was lost now in her own tangle of thoughts, picking sadly at the bread-crumb trail of her thwarted ambitions. “I would be a leader. I would have my own tribe, if only my father would notice me.”

  “How could any father fail to take note of a daughter such as you?”

  She shook her head. The childish legs swung, kicking the log where they sat.

  “What does
he notice, then?”

  “Warriors,” she said, “and hunters. And guns. The guns he wants, so that he can move west, beyond the fall line.”

  And Smith had quietly tucked the knowledge into a dark corner of his mind, even as he patted the girl’s back and strung a few silly words together to cheer her.

  In the fullness of spring, when buds swelled on the tips of branches and the mornings rang with the calls of thrushes and blackbirds, Pocahontas came to Jamestown more often. She was often accompanied by a sober young man, a bodyguard of sorts. Sometimes a train of Indian children followed her into the fort, cavorting among the cabins and filling the air with their wild cries. The Englishmen gave the little boys and girls cheap strings of beads and patted their bristled heads, showed them how to roll the hoops of discarded barrel lids up and down the lanes of the fort. Pocahontas’s train in turn would surround Thomas Savage and the handful of other young lads Newport had imported from England. She taught them Indian games, hopping contests and competitions of bragging, in which the children challenged one another to make increasingly outrageous claims. It always amused the men of the fort, to watch the lads attempt to brag in hand signs.

  The world was warming, and the Indian children laid off their leggings and cloaks, their loin-wraps and moccasins. They went about in naught but their paint and tattoos, as unconcerned with their own nakedness as beasts of the field. Smith kept as sharp a gaze on the children’s play as Pocahontas’s unspeaking bodyguard did on her. She was female, after all, and the men of Jamestown had seen no women since leaving England. As she turned feet over hands down the muddy lanes, her bare limbs flashing in the sunshine, shouting for the English boys to try and best her, Smith would often note a man looking on with too avid a stare. He would move into the watcher’s line of sight and regard him silently until the man blinked and hurried away.

  The girl had called him brother, and like any good brother, he would allow no harm to befall her.

  The affection he held for the child was a fierce and precious thing, the first emotion he’d felt since Constantinople that was not desperation or pain, disgust or rage—or bleak disappointment. She was a talisman to him, the sound of her playful laughter a shield against all the bitterness of an uncaring, unjust world. The love he felt for her was quite unlike that he had felt for Antonia, or for any woman before. He did not desire her body. It was her smile and her bubbling laugh that filled him with quiet satisfaction, with certainty in God’s goodness, with a peace he had not known for many years. In the light of a bright afternoon he surprised her by telling another child in perfect Real Tongue, “Bid Pocahontas bring me two little baskets, and I will give her white beads to make her a chain.” Pocahontas’s grin when she skipped to his side warmed him. He pulled a bit of red yarn from his pocket and sat with her, stringing beads as pure as summertime clouds, her stick-thin fingers deft at their work. When the chain was finished, he tied it around her neck. She bowed in the English style, an elaborate gesture of thanks, and the memory of her smile as she bobbed like a foraging bird stayed with John Smith for days afterward.

  One bright afternoon the girl arrived with a complement of warriors at her back. They moved up the shoreline in a resolute line, stiff and wary as they trailed Pocahontas’s slight, familiar frame. As he watched them approach Jamestown, Smith sensed with a sudden dark tremor that something immeasurably precious was about to be broken and lost forever.

  The usual cry of “The princess!” drifted from the watchtowers; the gate opened for her as it had so many times before. Smith went out to greet her and the men who stalked along silently in her wake. She looked up at him with a sober, businesslike mien that at once confirmed his fears.

  “Wingapoh,” he said.

  She returned the greeting with no quaver in her voice, but the briefest flash of regret shadowed her eyes. “My father sends me to request a gift from his tanx-werowance.”

  I am not a gentleman, too. Why did his memory slide backward so, tracking through the happy weeks of spring to that gray day when she had gazed at him with troubled eyes? He thought to lead her to the fire pit, their usual meeting place, but she had mentioned gifts. This was no social visit from the Great Chief’s ambassador. It was a mission of trade.

  He nodded his understanding. He ushered the party through the gate and sank easily into the traditional squatting posture of trade. Pocahontas did likewise, folding her arms, bracing her thin elbows against her knobby knees. Red excoriations showed through the pale calluses on her joints, a patch of dried scab where she had skinned one knee. Every bit a child, he thought, and yet she is so somber. Does she feel it, too? This thing we have built together, this friendship, about to be shattered?

  Her warriors lowered themselves, too, their dark eyes never leaving his face.

  Pocahontas began the negotiation without delay, as if eager to conclude an unpleasant business as quickly as possible. “Now that you are Real People, Chawnzmit, Powhatan expects your aid in his endeavors.”

  Smith glanced around the yard. Several of the colonists had gathered, eyeing the scene with unmasked curiosity. The younger boys of the fort clustered together and stared at Pocahontas, milling like pups waiting for their master to toss a ball.

  Smith spoke in the Indians’ language. “Let us use the Real Tongue.” The girl was so handy now with English, and spoke so boldly, that anyone might overhear. He did not fancy Ratcliffe learning of Chief Powhatan’s endeavors.

  “Very well.”

  “What aid does the mamanatowick seek?”

  She looked at him for one long moment. There was doubt in her eyes, and a subtle resentment, as if she would have shirked this particular task had she found any way to do so. “Guns,” she said at last.

  Smith nodded. He had expected this, truly. He had known the day would come, the demand would come. And yet he could feel only sorrow, the dragging certainty that his tie to the sportive little girl, his only happiness in a long year of desolation, was coming unraveled.

  “You must know, Pocahontas, that I cannot part with any guns.”

  “But you must. Your mamanatowick requires it.”

  “My mamanatowick is King James—the one across the sea. He has told us most strictly that we are to keep all our guns. Every one.”

  She frowned at him, not her usual glower of concentration as when she puzzled over a new word. This was a true, sharp scowl, and it stabbed his heart, to see her disapproval directed at him. “Powhatan is your mamanatowick now. You entered the temple; you wore the bearskin. You smoked the pipe!”

  “All true. Yet what am I to do? Honor requires that I keep my word to my first mamanatowick, even though I revere the great Powhatan.”

  Pocahontas looked away. Her eyes were distant. She turned his words over carefully, examining them from all angles, seeking their weakness. Smith’s heart constricted to see the intensity of the child’s frown. Constantinople was so long ago. This child was the only company he had looked to with any kind of delight since those languid afternoons with Antonia. Must we meet now as trading partners, as enemies? My dear child, my little sister, who is a commoner like me . . . Bitterly, silently, he cursed Powhatan’s name.

  “We brought food,” Pocahontas said. “We kept you and your men from starving. What of that honor? Would you throw that gift into my father’s face?”

  And there was the weakness. Smith owed his life to the child twice over. He was no gentleman, but honor was real to him. All the English owed much to the naturals who had sustained them through the long and terrible winter. But guns? Put firearms into the naturals’ hands, and it would be only a matter of time before one of the stiff, stolid warriors surrounding the little ambassador turned a gun on an Englishman. They were deadly enough with their arrows. Firearms in Indian hands would be a devastation. The colonists had already been fool enough to reveal the range of their shot at Apocant over the sordid business with George Classen
. How far had knowledge of English weaponry spread? Did Powhatan himself know the range of a tassantassa bullet? Any mystery that might still surround English firepower was the only advantage Jamestown still held. And the tense, wary faces of Pocahontas’s warrior guards spoke plainly of the scant trust on either side of the palisade. No—at all costs, the naturals must not have their guns.

  “Very well,” Smith said, forming the ploy quickly in his mind, and hating himself even as he spoke the words. “The mamanatowick may have his guns. I shall give him two. Come along with me.”

  He led the party to the northwest wall. Beyond was the stretch of marsh, bogs that grew wider and deeper by the day as the season advanced. Past the marsh stood the deep tangle of the forest, where Powhatan’s spies waited unseen like malevolent birds roosting in the treetops. There two cannons stood, wheels half-sunk in the mud, muzzles pointing out through freshly hewn gaps in the face of the palisade, nosing like two eager dogs through a hedge. They had hauled the things ashore from the Susan Constant upon Newport’s return.

  “Here are your guns,” Smith said. “If you can carry them back to Werowocomoco, I will gladly give them to Powhatan, with my thanks and blessings.”

  The Indian men looked at one another cautiously. Then one seized the great, cold muzzle of the nearest cannon and strained against it. His feet slid in the mud. One or two more men joined him, hauling in concert, rocking it. But of course it was no use.

  Pocahontas looked up at him, her mouth flat and thin with shocked disappointment. “You mock us, Chawnzmit. You mock me.”

  He cringed at the hurt in her voice. “No,” he said gently, but she spun on her heel and nearly ran for the fort’s gate.

  She called a command over her shoulder, and her warriors abandoned their efforts at the cannon. As they passed him, they stared one by one into his face, and their looks were filled with hateful promise.

  “Pocahontas, wait,” he said, moving swiftly after her. “Don’t open the gate,” he called to his men.