But they would not contradict the wish of the princess, their savior and angel. They swung the gate wide at her curt request, and her escort of bristling men filed through.
Pocahontas turned one bleak look on him, a wounded stare cast over her thin shoulder as she strode toward the river.
“I’m sorry,” he cried out, startled at the pain in his heart. “I have no choice. Don’t you see?”
But the gate swung closed behind her. The crossbars dropped into place with a desolate clatter.
She was gone.
POCAHONTAS
Season of Cattapeuk
All the long way home to Werowocomoco, Pocahontas sat rigid and silent in the bow of her canoe while the men paddled behind her. Her shoulders and neck ached from her own stiffness, yet she could not release the anger, the terrible stunned sensation of betrayal that gripped her as tightly as an osprey grips a fish.
The men in her party talked among themselves, low and offended, of the rudeness of Chawnzmit, of his astonishing arrogance. It was so far beyond what any respectable tanx was entitled to. All the men talked save for Kocoum, who sat behind Pocahontas as silent as she was. His paddle moved steadily in the current. Now and then a drop of river water was flung from the paddle’s tip as he crossed it in the space between them. Her back was soon sprinkled with droplets like tears. They ran in slow, halting streams down her spine, but she made no move to brush them from her skin.
When they reached the shore of Werowocomoco and beached their dugouts, Kocoum offered his hand to help her from the canoe. She rose with a stifled gasp; the pain in her tense muscles was sudden and fierce. Kocoum placed one of his big hands on the back of her neck and squeezed; she sighed as the tension abated.
“What will you tell your father?” he said quietly.
“What can I tell him, other than the truth?”
They made their way to Powhatan’s longhouse. She felt the eyes of women and warriors on her as she picked her path through Werowocomoco, past the communal dance circle where a few children squatted in the dust corralling ants with twigs, past the homes of her aunts and cousins who sat weaving new-sprouted silk grass in the sun. She caught sight of Matachanna, smiling as she braided a strand of beads into Nonoma’s hair; the smile faded from her sister’s face at the sight of Pocahontas marching in obvious disgrace toward the mamanatowick’s great house.
She came face-to-face with her father’s door flap and stood gazing at it mutely, stupid with loss and humiliation. Kocoum lifted it aside, and she bent automatically to enter.
Down the long length of the hall, she could see that Powhatan was on his feet. He moved about his heart fire with a steadier gait than she had seen him use in many months. Wives chattered in the depths of the longhouse as they worked. Restrained feminine laughter came from the bedsteads along the walls, the thumps of sleeping mats being beaten. A woman hummed as she sorted the contents of a storage bag. Pots of paint and a flea whisk made of pungent dried herbs lay at her bare feet. At the fire, Powhatan fondly patted the heads and bottoms of a pair of young wives, who giggled as they assembled a roasting spit with green saplings and twine made of deer sinew.
Pocahontas’s feet dragged as she drew nearer. She had not seen her father so happy in far too long. It was the anticipation of guns, she knew, the growing and flourishing of his grand designs. He relished the thought of falling on the Massawomecks, wiping them from the land like a grease stain, claiming their rich territory for the Real People. He was certain that his time had come at last, his victory inevitable, guaranteed by the Okeus, by this strange and contradictory blessing of tassantassas invading Tsenacomoco.
And she must be the one to tell him that his dream could never be. He will think of only disappointment when he looks on me. I will never be called a lady; I will never be werowansqua.
She hung back, hesitating, gripping the upright post of an arcing, smoke-blackened beam. A low voice said something she could not catch, and Powhatan turned his face toward the unseen speaker, nodded in agreement, his long, silver hair swinging. Pocahontas had not caught the words, but she recognized the timbre of the voice at once, its natural force and intensity.
Opechancanough.
So her uncle had come all the way from Pamunkey-town. No doubt he had come to witness the great triumph, to see the guns with his own eyes, to plot with the mamanatowick how the priceless weapons would be deployed against their enemies.
I had best pull this thorn out quickly.
She took a deep breath. The taste of raw meat and the sappy greenness of the roasting spit filled her mouth. Pocahontas moved away from the bedstead, placing herself quietly in her father’s path. He stopped his pacing and looked at her with some surprise, and then a grin split his weathered old face.
“There she is now, my little Mischief. What is the news from the white men’s fort?”
Pocahontas hung her head. She could feel her uncle Opechancanough waiting, tense and malevolent as a snake poised to strike. “They would not send guns, Father.”
“What?”
“The tassantassas were deceptive. They mocked your request, and taunted us with the heaviness of their biggest guns. They said you could have them if we could move them, but they were so heavy a hundred men could not have moved them one handspan through the mud.” She was dimly aware of the sly concealment in her own words, and wondered at it. They, not he. They, not Chawnzmit. But it was Chawnzmit who deceived me. It was his own doing—he who I thought was my friend. Why do I protect him from my father’s wrath?
Powhatan’s face flushed a livid red. His wives glanced at one another and withdrew, moving quickly down the length of the great hall.
Opechancanough grunted, a sound like a bear waking from interrupted slumber. “I told you, Brother. The tassantassas are liars. Perhaps now you see it: they must be finished, removed. They must be crushed like flies on a grindstone.”
A bleak vision filled Pocahontas’s mind, of Chawnzmit shot through by Opechancanough’s bow, his body bristling with arrows, the fletchings dyed scarlet with his blood. She saw his face, that strange wiry pelt of beard and his smile of friendship beneath it, the eyes as blue as the sky in cattapeuk, smiling at her with understanding, with kinship. And she saw a blue eye pierced by an arrow, heard a scream of pain and rage. She did not want him crushed—not Chawnzmit. Not the little boys at the fort, either, nor the men on the tower who called out to her, “Princess! The princess has come!” Chawnzmit had wounded her with his deception, but he and the tassantassas valued her as no one in Werowocomoco did—as her father never would, now that she had failed to secure the guns he so desperately longed for. She could not let them be destroyed. And if she could retain her hold on the tassantassas, maintain her value to the fort, she might yet find some way to restore her worth to Powhatan.
But she could not regain her father’s favor without the white men. Without them, she had no hope of rising to werowansqua.
Her throat was dry with fear and shame, but still she spoke. “Father, though their deception was a grave offense, I know we can still obtain the tassantassas’ guns.”
Powhatan raised his head, a slow gesture of permission; Pocahontas clutched at her racing thoughts, trying to order them, praying to the spirits that she might make some sense to her father. She must speak clearly, with confidence. She must not waver.
Before she could open her mouth, Opechancanough stood. He was tall, broad, sinewy, slow-slinking like a cougar stalking among the trees. His eyes fixed on her a baleful stare, and she shrank in the force of his presence, painfully aware that she was only a girl, and a common one at that.
“It is an outrage,” Opechancanough said, his voice tight and quiet with disgust, “that a girl should be allowed to speak to the mamanatowick with such impunity. Brother, be your own man again. Stop listening to the counsel of white men and naked children.”
Powhatan turned a
look of offended dignity on his brother. Opechancanough’s arms were folded over the tattoos of his chest, the proud black bows of Pamunkey crossed above his heart. He did not blink under the mamanatowick’s stare. He stood his ground, unwavering and unapologetic.
Pocahontas gasped at the sight. It reached deep into her spirit, unsettling her in ways she could not describe, could not fully identify. With a clutch of remembered pain, she recalled the time she had followed Naukaquawis through the forest, years before his huskanaw, when he was only a boy with a shaven head, and she just six years old. Far beyond the boundaries of Werowocomoco, they had followed a trail of dung and broken branches to a great clearing where a herd of wood buffalo grazed in the autumn sunshine. Together they had watched two bulls fight for control of the herd. One bull was old, stiff in the shoulders, with small, rheumy eyes ringed by black flies. He had frothed and roared as the young challenger assaulted him, but his aging body could not stave off the onslaught. The younger bull gored him, and the old bull’s silence as he limped into the forest had torn at Pocahontas’s heart. She had sniffled and cried on the way home, the forest blurring behind her tears. Naukaquawis had teased her for her softness. It filled her with a terrible, cold ache, a trembling wistful sorrow, knowing the old bull would die in the forest, haunted by the memory of his cows and calves, mocked by his own faded strength.
“No,” she said quickly. Opechancanough’s eyes were as fierce and piercing as a hawk’s. She slid her gaze away from him and turned her face toward her father, who was still the mamanatowick. He had not been gored by Opechancanough yet—not yet. “Powhatan is wise to maintain good relations with the tassantassas. I have been to their town. I have seen how they are. I know their ways and their weaknesses.”
“What does a girl know of men’s weaknesses?” Opechancanough spat the words at her.
She looked up at him. With a tremulous wonder she recognized something of the old, defeated bull in her uncle’s demeanor, too, and her eyes narrowed. What horn might wound one as strong and fearless as he? In the same moment she asked herself the question, she knew the answer. Tsena-no-ha.
“I know more than you realize, werowance. I know you still reel from the loss of your wife.”
It was a mistake to say it. Opechancanough advanced on her like a storm rolling upriver. She tried to shy away from him, but he seized her by the upper arm. His fingers bit painfully into her flesh as he shook her.
“Do not speak to me of that, you pestilent child. You know nothing.”
“Do not touch my daughter.” Powhatan’s voice boomed, a ringing drumbeat of authority, a sound of natural power that Pocahontas had not heard in many months.
Opechancanough’s hand opened and she jerked her body out of his grasp. The relief of hearing the mamanatowick’s surge of strength was so great that tears stung her eyes. She dashed them away with the back of her hand.
She spoke quickly, before her uncle could move again. “The tassantassas do lie, it is true. But they do it because they are hungry. All their food burned up, as I told you already. We bring them gifts, but it is never enough. They are always fearful, always wondering when their stores will run out. It makes them wary and untrusting. But if they have full bellies, they won’t be so desperate anymore. They will be civil.
“Chawnzmit, their chief, is a good man.” She took a deep breath, hoping the secret didn’t show on her face—her secret knowledge that Chawnzmit was not, in fact, a werowance. “Honor is important to him. He will give you all the honor you require, if only he can stop fearing for the survival of his men. Once he knows they will always be fed, he will do his duty to you, mamanatowick.”
Her words staggered to a halt. She did not know where half the words came from, unless a spirit breathed them into her throat, unless the Okeus himself put them in her mouth. She prayed they were true words, from a good spirit, not from a lurking manitou bent on trickery. She kept her eyes servilely on the floor, waiting. The sound of her own ragged heartbeat filled her ears.
At last Powhatan spoke. “What do you propose, daughter?”
“It is the season for planting. Let me take women to the tassantassas’ fort—and a few men to protect us. Let us show them how to make gardens, how to grow crops. Once they have thriving gardens and know that they can harvest food, they will cease their fearful behavior—and their deceptions.” Okeus, let it be true. Spirits, make it so.
Powhatan resumed his pacing, walking his circuit around the heart fire. The light of the fire moved fitfully on his skin, dancing on the bold designs of his fine apron. He moved with trembling legs again, the old-bull weakness creeping back into his limbs. Pocahontas turned her unfocused gaze on Powhatan’s clustered, whispering wives so that she would not see his trembling. Her eyes did not want to see her father’s growing frailty. She felt Opechancanough breathing hoarsely beside her.
“Perhaps it is as you say,” Powhatan said slowly.
Pocahontas heard the desperate hope in his voice—the need for guns, the strength Powhatan could no longer wield with his aging body. He wanted it to be as Pocahontas said, and so did she.
Opechancanough sighed, a sound of vast disappointment that edged near pity. Pocahontas cut her eyes quickly toward him, and saw him turn away from the spectacle of the old mamanatowick with an abrupt twitch, the knotted lock of his hair clattering its copper and beads as he went. “Weak as a woman,” he muttered.
Pocahontas allowed herself a small smile. Women were not so weak, after all, if a woman could unman the great Opechancanough just by leaving his hearth. Even girls were not weak, if their words could influence the mamanatowick. Her hands clenched at her sides; her palms tingled as if she held something, something warm and weighty and of great value. She thought of Chawnzmit sitting beside the fire pit, laughing as his tongue tripped over words. She thought of Opossu-no-quonuske, shining in her cape of black birds’ feathers.
I will be a werowansqua after all, she vowed to no one but herself, her chest swelling with pride and the hot glow of victory. See if I am not, one day.
Naukaquawis laid his callused hand on Pocahontas’s shoulder, pushing her gently but firmly away from the dugout she was helping to load with gardening tools. He steered her toward the path back to Werowocomoco, where the underbrush would provide them with some measure of privacy. Under the hand of a werowance, she could do little to resist. She called instructions to the women over her shoulder as she went. “Don’t forget the digging sticks! At least ten—more, if they can be found!”
In the forest shade, she turned a defiant gaze up to her brother’s face. He had painted himself with black and red, bold colors to strike awe into an enemy’s heart, though Pocahontas still felt sure that the tassantassas were no enemies of the Real People. “What do you want, Naukaquawis? I have work to do.”
“I intend to remind you,” he said slowly, his eyes steady and hard in their red-and-black mask, “who is in control of this mission.”
“It was my idea. Powhatan heard the proposal from my lips. You never would have thought of it.”
“Chawnzmit is still my tanx-werowance, even if I didn’t save him from the war clubs. You are a child, low blood, and female. I expect obedience from you. Obedience and respect.”
She squinted at him. There was anger in his eyes, carefully controlled but simmering just below the surface. He had not forgotten—no, by the Okeus, how could he forget—that she had taken Chawnzmit from his own grasp, stolen him at the height of an important ceremony before the eyes of many men and priests. Chawnzmit was to be his prize, a reward fit for a chief. Instead the tassantassa had ended up the plaything of a low-blood girl. The men must joke about it still, rubbing the humiliation in Naukaquawis’s face.
Her brother controlled his spite admirably, and if there was any taunting, he bore it well. She nearly felt sorry for having stolen his prize. He was everything a man of the Real People ought to be: stoic, reliable, l
oyal, and brave. In the days when they were both children, Naukaquawis had been a kind and patient brother. He would make a very fine chief. He might even rise to be mamanatowick one day, and if that day came before Pocahontas could secure her father’s cooperation, it would fall to Naukaquawis to say who would become a werowance—or a werowansqua.
She bowed her head slightly and pressed a hand to her heart. “Brother, I have not always been fair to you. But I swear that I will defer to you in this work. You are my werowance, for as long as we remain with the white men.”
He gave a short, sharp grunt of acceptance.
“But,” she said quietly, her skin prickling in anticipation of his backlash, “I would ask you humbly to recall that I know their language, and their ways.”
“The one called Chawnzmit knows our language. Any of us may communicate with him.”
“This is true. But only I can speak to the other white men. Chawnzmit is not always near. You will see. And of course, Brother, gardening is women’s work. Only we know the lore of plants and seeds. If we are to teach the tassantassas to grow their own food, you must allow me—allow all the women—some freedom to act as we see fit.”
He paused a moment, regarding her thoughtfully. At last he nodded. “You have your uses. I won’t interfere with women’s work, nor take away your small honors, Amonute.” She bit her lip at the implied criticism of her own actions. “As long as you obey.”
When they returned to finish loading the canoes, Pocahontas was startled to find Matachanna and Nonoma working alongside the canoe. Between them, the girls hefted a large basket of seed corn, tied a woven cover in place, and then lashed the basket carefully into the hull of their boat.
Matachanna looked up with her familiar, gently beaming smile. “That’s a fifth of the seed corn from our house’s cache. Do you think it will be enough?”
Pocahontas nodded. “Are you coming to the fort with me?”
“We both are.” Matachanna tucked Nonoma beneath her arm in a quick hug. “We want to see your tassantassas up close. And I want to help you, Pocahontas. Sometimes even you need a friend paddling your canoe.”
Tidewater: A Novel of Pocahontas and the Jamestown Colony Page 20
