Tidewater: A Novel of Pocahontas and the Jamestown Colony

by Libbie Hawker

  See, her smile said, receding into the velvet of the night. See how love is better than war.

  Smith woke fearful and dazed, eyes stinging from a night of precious little sleep. The hard, damp wood of the landing boat pressed into his shoulder and back. He sat up carefully. His cramped body prickled and burned. One boot pressed into a groaning man’s leg; his hand came down on the chest of another. He was laid out with the rest of the landing party in the bed of the rowboat. Those men who could not fit inside slumped on the ground, leaning against the boat’s sides and each other. They snored softly.

  Smith made a quick count. They were all there, each man accounted for and all, so far as he could tell, alive and unharmed. Pocahontas had kept her word.

  A watery yellow dawn was rising, the sun climbing steadily into a shroud of thin, vaporous cloud. When the men aboard the shallop noted him stirring, they called out to him. Smith waved. He was well—mystified, taken aback, and considerably exercised in his person, but well.

  The landing party soon stirred to life, too. Groggy men wandered into the brush to relieve themselves. Their cheeks and the backs of necks still bore traces of paint or the scratch marks of nails. Smith sent a man to the shallop for food, and they broke a cold fast in silence, eyeing one another with wonder and doubt.

  By the time the final crumb of hardtack was gone, Smith grew aware of a rising sound from the depths of Werowocomoco. It was a great, deep swell of voices, masculine and low, punctuated by staccato bursts of chanting—or perhaps it was laughter. The landing party glanced uneasily from one man to another. Finally all eyes landed on Smith.

  He stood, brushing his palms together. “The Great Chief has returned.”

  The mamanatowick was gracious in receiving Smith—more gracious, in truth, than he had any cause to be. When Smith was admitted into his presence, Powhatan accepted his bow in dignified silence, the lined face betraying nothing of the loathing he must surely feel for the English and their devil of a spokesman, Chawnzmit. He ordered his women to bring food to refresh his guest, and Smith, knowing the conventions, engaged in polite, inconsequential talk until it arrived. He avoided touching upon the true nature of his call until the chief at last stared down at him from his high bed with wry, expectant eyes.

  “Great Chief,” Smith began, “I would ask you to come to Jamestown, for we—that is, my own mamanatowick and I—have a valuable gift for you.”

  Powhatan received this in silence, and for one moment of soaring relief, Smith believed the man would accept, that his work would be done and he could return to his tiny cabin at Jamestown and never set foot in Werowocomoco again. Then he saw the tremor of fury that shook the chief’s frame. The old face was still as a grave, but the eyes crackled with sparks of disgust.

  Smith perceived the problem at once. He hurried to explain. “We invite you to Jamestown so that we might do you the respect you deserve. Allow us to feast you, mamanatowick. Let us show you that we know how to honor a chief of your standing.”

  But it was no use. In one smooth movement, Powhatan stood. The old chief drew himself to his full height; the shoulders lost the stoop of age, and the back gave up its bend of weariness. He towered over Smith where he sat cross-legged beside the heart fire. The curtain of silver hair slid over one shoulder, releasing into the longhouse the smell of herbs and animal skins, the tang of the sacred smoke that brought visions. The odor disquieted Smith. He remembered with a shiver the mask confronting him from the shadows and the rake of the cougar’s claws against his cheek. The smell of the temple. Powhatan was still imbued with the power of the sacred space. It buoyed him up, filling the sails of his hatred for the English with a hot and mighty wind.

  “I am the mamanatowick, Chawnzmit. I do not come to your call like a tame dog. If your little chief would give me gifts, you shall bring them here, to me.”

  Smith bowed his head in acquiescence.

  “There is only one thing I want from your people,” Powhatan said.

  Smith did not wait for the chief to say it. “Guns.”

  Powhatan made no reply, and Smith dared to glance up at him. He caught him in the act of lowering himself back to his perch. Smith noted how the old man’s arms shook as he eased his weight onto the bed.

  “I will not bring you guns,” Smith said, choosing his words with care, “but I will bring you a great honor from my mamanatowick, who recognizes your might even across the great sea.”

  Powhatan’s eyes narrowed. His curiosity was piqued equal to his ire. His curiosity may be all I need to get this mad business over with.

  “Go, then, Chawnzmit. I would see how your kind honors Great Chiefs, though I doubt you know the meaning of honor.”

  Captain Newport himself came to Werowocomoco three days later to bestow the crown and declare Chief Powhatan a tributary of King James and England. He traveled in as much ceremonial pomp as Jamestown could muster, sailing the Discovery upriver until Smith feared its keel would catch and hold in the deep, silty mud when the tide inevitably receded. Word traveled fast through the forest, faster than the Discovery. Long before they reached Werowocomoco the riverbanks filled with naturals, who milled and waved, chanted and sang. Smith stood at the rail beneath the tight canopy of the foresail, watching the crowded banks slide past. Now and then over the barks of the crew and the groan of wind in the lines, he caught the words of the Indians’ chants. More often than not the songs mocked the English, volleying acerbic rhymes against the Discovery’s unfeeling wooden hull. Oblivious, the Englishmen grinned and waved and shouted their innocent greetings. Alone among them, Smith stood still, watching and listening, ever alert for the shade of Opechancanough sliding through the whispering trees.

  Smith was, of course, among the handful chosen to come ashore, bearing Powhatan’s crown. He remained surly and quiet in the landing boat, staring at the box that held the crown as if it contained a knot of vipers. He could feel Newport’s eyes upon him, smugly cheered by Smith’s own silence, no doubt glad that Jamestown’s harshest critic had been cowed at last. He refused to meet the captain’s eye, slipping unthinkingly into the custom of the naturals, paying Newport all the attention and respect he was due.

  Warriors helped pull the boat ashore, pressing hands to heart and vowing friendship and safe passage. They eyed the box Smith carried with open curiosity. Some of them touched it or tapped upon it, but none dared remove it from Smith’s hands. All knew these gifts were for the mamanatowick—the mysterious box and more. King James had heard that the Great Chief enjoyed hunting and made use of dogs—though certainly no mangy Indian creature could equal a good English hound. He had sent a pure-white greyhound, tall and sleek, to improve the mamanatowick’s stock; this both men and women exclaimed over with open admiration as Newport coaxed the dog from the rowboat. A wooden bedstead followed in pieces, finely carved in English oak and oiled to a rich glow. Finally, the men produced a few bottles of good white wine.

  Powhatan deigned to meet them out of doors, at the communal fire pit where the women had danced on that strange, starshot night. The reason for the meeting place was clear: so that all his people, not just his favorite wives and his select werowances, might witness the spectacle of the English bringing tribute to the Great Chief.

  His wives piled mats until they were hip high, and then draped the stack with several plush wolf pelts. Powhatan made his slow and methodical way from the direction of his smoky hall, wide shoulders draped with a long leather cloak painted black as cold ash. It dragged in the dirt behind him; the people he passed gave the train of his trappings a wide and respectful berth and fell into step behind him, singing and shaking dried gourds over their heads. Their rattles made a din like a hailstorm, a sound that shut out all other senses save for sight, and Smith’s eyes were full of the majesty of Powhatan. His long gray hair spilled down his back. Here and there one of his wives had braided a lock, and these few thin braids hung heavy with ornaments
: bird claws and weasel tails, clusters of animal teeth and flat discs of copper, which winked and dazzled in the midday sun. On his brow, the crown of red-dyed deer hair bristled tall and proud, a more royal sight by far than any gold leaf and glass gems King James might contrive.

  Powhatan lowered himself onto his makeshift throne of wolfskins. His wives sank to the ground around him. The people of Werowocomoco thronged about the fire pit, children and women pressing side by side with hunters and warriors. The murmur of their voices was like a wind in an autumn wood.

  “Great Powhatan,” Newport said, gesturing grandly with his hand. “I am charged by King James, sovereign of England and of this land, with presenting these tokens of the king’s esteem to you, his loyal subject.” Newport glanced sharply at Smith, waiting for the translation.

  Smith drew a deep breath. He caught sight of Pocahontas in the crowd, peering out from her place between a young woman and the big-eared warrior guard who had ever been her shadow when she had visited the fort. Her smooth brow was furrowed with confusion. When she caught his eye, her look was dark with wounded disbelief.

  “Mamanatowick,” Smith said in the naturals’ tongue, “the mamanatowick across the sea sends gifts in acknowledgment of your greatness.”

  The men of the crowd muttered their approval; a few women raised an ululating cheer. Pocahontas’s face pinched in bewilderment.

  One by one, Newport presented the offerings, and Smith translated at his side. Powhatan accepted the wine and the bedstead in polite if unimpressed silence. The dog he gestured for, leaning from his throne to examine it with his hands, watching it trot around the fire pit at the end of its lead. He nodded, well satisfied with this gift, if with no other. A dog was a thing of real value, of obvious utility. The greyhound was large and clearly swift, and its unspotted white fur was a novelty not seen among the hunting dogs of Tsenacomoco. “Suitable,” he said to Smith.

  “There is one gift more,” Newport said.

  Smith ducked his head close to the captain’s ear. “I implore you, give him the crown in the box; do not make a spectacle of placing it upon his head.”

  “Nonsense. He cannot swear fealty to King James if he does not kneel to accept his tributary crown.”

  “He cannot swear fealty in any case. He does not understand what you do today, and wouldn’t swear if he did.”

  Newport’s glare was sharp. “We have discussed this already, Smith. Open the box.”

  “We will lose all,” Smith said. One last warning, one last attempt. It was all he would make, this final effort to spare the colony from further disaster—and then let Newport hold the responsibility for Jamestown’s fate in the one hand that remained to him.

  Smith opened the box.

  The ripple of awe ran through the crowd. The crown blazed in the sun, bright as lightning in a nighttime storm. Powhatan leaned toward it with interest.

  It fell to Smith to cajole the old chief into standing. Powhatan could not be made to understand why he ought to rise, but his curiosity in English custom was enough to coax him to his feet. Kneeling, however, was unthinkable. When Smith halfheartedly suggested the mamanatowick take to his knees, his detached, stoic resolve broke and he stared openly at Smith and Newport in shock. Several of the English demonstrated, and Powhatan watched them sink into their subservient crouches in open disgust.

  At Newport’s word, two or three men pressed on the old chief’s shoulders, hoping to force him to his knees. A few of the chief’s warriors started forward with protests on their lips, but Powhatan waved them back. He preferred, it seemed, to face English customs on his own. Despite his great age and encroaching weakness, Powhatan bore up with noble grace, resisting the hands of the English as if their leaning weight were no more than the bite of a flea, unworthy of his notice.

  His neck did bend slightly with the effort, though, and Newport accounted it enough a gesture of submission to satisfy King James. He placed the crown on Powhatan’s head among his red bristles of deerhide. The cheap metal and glass glittered atop the puccoon-dyed tufts. Smith turned away from the sight.

  The twisted masque of a coronation concluded with the requisite feast. Smith sank to the earth in relief as baskets of corn cake were passed, as the women shared out jugs of sweet nut milk and fillets of fish roasted in wrappings of leaves. He picked at the food while the dances commenced, and watched with a grimace of distaste as Powhatan’s most favored chiefs inspected the crown. Presently a small, warm weight settled beside him. He peered from the corner of his eye at Pocahontas, her coltish legs folded beneath her, facing partly away with a basket of bread between them. The string of white beads hung from her neck, his red yarn peeking between the baubles.

  “You cannot speak to me openly?”

  “Not with my father so near. He has forbidden it.”

  “Then you took a risk, when you danced in your antlers.”

  “I had to show you.”

  That love was better than war. Smith nodded, though she did not see his tacit agreement.

  The girl bit into a corn cake. Flecks of golden meal clung to her lip. She wiped them away with the back of her hand. “You do not eat, Chawnzmit.”

  “I find I have little appetite.”

  “Is your spirit troubled?”

  “Very much.”

  “I understand why.”

  “Do you?”

  For one brief moment she turned, looked full into his eyes. Her face was long and wise, and pale with sorrow. “Powhatan may not understand what you have done today, Chawnzmit, but I do.”

  He dropped his eyes. He could not bear to look at her, that accusing, knowing stare, that innocent and loving face. “Do you, Pocahontas?”

  “One day he will come to understand what you meant by this ceremony. And he will not be pleased.”

  “I hope that day is a long way off, for all our sakes.”

  “That is my hope, too. But I fear the day will come sooner than any of us would like. You are still my brother, Chawnzmit, no matter what my father commands. Our spirits are the same. I would not see you hurt in this war, if war cannot be avoided.”

  “I would not see anyone hurt, if I could make it so.”

  She gathered herself to rise and reached to pick up the basket. Her hand brushed his arm, a brief, warm gesture, full of more sympathy than he deserved.

  “I know,” she said gently, and walked away.

  POCAHONTAS

  Season of Taquitock

  The harvest was thin. Cornstalks dried weeks before they should have, and their leaves were pale and limp, shot at the edges with golden yellow long before the cooler days of autumn set in. The ears were small and sparse and hugged tight to the brittle stalks. When they were cracked away from their secretive pocket between leaf and stem, the scent given off by the broken plants was dusty and weak, not the robust sweetness of harvests past. Beneath their sheaths of thin, crackling husk, the kernels were small and gray and fell short of the ends of the cobs, leaving empty white spaces like the unfilled cells of a honeycomb. On the bean plants, pods hung like the thin, bony fingers of old men. Squashes were undersized and had to be hunted out on hands and knees. The women rooted beneath spreads of leaves grayed by dust and came up with small gourds barely larger than a fist. At least, they said with forced smiles, the flesh of the squash would be especially sweet this year.

  The weak harvest was an ill omen. Pocahontas noted the changes in her body, the tenderness as small breasts began to jut from her chest, the down-soft fuzz just beginning to darken between her thighs. She pinched herself in anger, as if she might reproach her body into delaying its progress into womanhood. Such flagrant ripening was unseemly at a time like this, with the crops slowly failing. Did the spirits mean some cruel joke, ushering her into her years of fertility and magic while the very earth failed? Or did she have some uncontrollable magic already, draining the land of
its fecundity so that she might fuel her own strange and compelling fire?

  And compelling that blaze was. Pocahontas found herself watching with rapt fascination while the boys practiced their archery. In the mornings their mothers would throw clods of earth or pieces of wood high into the air, and the boys would line up to shoot, eyes intent, brows furrowed with concentration. No boy could have his breakfast until he’d shot down his target, so this was the only time of the day when their attention was fixed, when Pocahontas might stare with impunity, and without fear that she might be noticed and become the target of boys’ rude songs when everyone gathered that evening to dance and pray. Peering around the edge of a longhouse, she would watch the shapes in their arms change as they drew their bowstrings, the muscles standing out sudden and wiry, their bodies lively and strong as fish thrashing in a net. It was the eldest boys she watched most avidly, those who were only months away from their huskanaw. Most of them, like Pocahontas herself, had already obtained the first of their tattoos. The way the black-and-red ink slid over the tense, lean muscle of an arm or back brought a rush of heat to her face and filled her nights with restless kicking and turning.

  As she ripened, she grew ever closer to Matachanna. Not only did she now understand her half sister’s blushes and sidelong glances at Utta-ma-tomakkin, but her friendship with Matachanna was more important than ever. With womanhood approaching, its rites of magic and times of blood, Pocahontas felt keenly her lack of friends. Who would join her in the sweat lodge to celebrate her first woman’s courses? Who would help her dedicate her moon’s blood to the spirits, who would giggle with her as her thighs were painted red with puccoon and covered with a fringed apron? Her drive to learn the tassantassa language had frightened away most of the girls of Werowocomoco—those who had not already abandoned Pocahontas for her sharp tongue and mocking nature. No, the truth of Matachanna’s long-ago words was plain to see. Pocahontas was not well loved. Her mocking war dance that summer night when she had worn antlers and led the women of Werowocomoco to weave a wild spell around the tassantassas was still spoken of with fond humor among the lanes and longhouses of the capital. But that was not the same thing as being well loved.