Tidewater: A Novel of Pocahontas and the Jamestown Colony

by Libbie Hawker

  “Or I will shoot him,” Chawnzmit said, “and my men will despoil your women and kill your sons and daughters.”

  The weeping intensified; the men glanced at one another with fear in their eyes. Opechancanough knew what they were thinking: these tassantassas still had their great guns that could shatter trees. Only the Okeus knew what weapons they might deploy against their families.

  Chawnzmit sensed his advantage and pressed on: “And when my men have destroyed every last one of you, I will open your stores and take your food for myself.” The sound of children sobbing was too much for Opechancanough’s warriors. Bowstrings relaxed; arrows returned to quivers.

  No. Opechancanough’s hand closed helplessly on a knife hilt that was not there. When Chawnzmit released him, he dropped to his knees in the snow, felled by the double blow of shame and defeat.

  SMITH

  January 1609

  Smith took half of what he could find in Pamunkey’s frozen cellar pits. It was not much—clearly the village had suffered through a meager harvest and a disappointing hunt. Women uncovered their stores and stood with faces downcast, tears dropping to form pockmarks in the snow. Threads of steam rose from the tiny holes like wan, lost ghosts. Again he felt the dreadful twist of self-loathing writhe like a clubbed serpent in his chest as he set his men to work, rifling through baskets and bags and clay jars that were not nearly full enough. Children wept, burying their faces in the hems of their mothers’ winter cloaks. The men scowled, their mouths thin, and their bitter eyes swearing hatred and promising revenge.

  Smith did not breathe a sigh of relief until he was back aboard the shallop and the vessel was clear of Pamunkey’s shores, leaving Opechancanough and his warriors far behind. Opechancanough was a large and powerful man, and no coward. Smith had made a desperate gamble. It was only by Christ’s mercy that the gamble had paid out.

  John Russell, convinced at last that the Indians were not going to retaliate from the riverbank, slung his musket over his shoulder. He cast an appraising eye at the Pamunkey spoils. “It isn’t much, is it?”

  “No,” Smith said. “Not much. It will last us a few months, perhaps, if we take care to keep the rats away. There was still half a barrel of oats at Jamestown and three-quarters of a crate of hardtack. There should still be a bit of salt pork left, too. We will eat precious little, but we’ll eat.”

  “And when this food runs out?”

  Smith shook his head. “I will think of something.”

  Russell clenched one broad, hard fist. “Fills me with ire to think of all the food their Great King gave us, only to rob our boat again while we cowered in their longhouse.”

  “Aye,” another man put in, “there’s much more food at their big city—whatever they call it, Werey-way . . .”

  “Werowocomoco.”

  The man’s lips moved, trying to form the word. He gave up with a shrug. “We all saw that they have more food there.”

  It was true. During Smith’s many months of trade, he had come to know the naturals’ customs well. At every harvest and every hunt, they sent a portion of their goods to Powhatan, a tribute for his protection, to placate the old man into continued benevolence. Werowocomoco was a far richer prize than Pamunkey or any other village Smith might raid. And yet it was full of angry men whose peculiar Indian sense of pride had been badly bruised when Smith declined to offer up his throat for the cutting. The rush of quivering energy that always followed a confrontation had drained from Smith’s limbs and the very thought of returning to Werowocomoco, of facing a pack of enraged Indians who thirsted for his blood, made him heavy with exhaustion and despair.

  And yet, if they took even just a quarter of Werowocomoco’s stores, they would need fear hunger no more. It would be more than enough to see them through the winter and beyond. They would survive in comfort until the next harvest, when, God willing, their garden would mature and produce enough food to carry them securely through winter’s black months. With a fraction of Powhatan’s stores, they could fend off starvation—even if no more supply ships came from England.

  Werowocomoco would be on guard. Or would they? The shallop moved downstream faster than any natural could run; Smith was sure of it.

  “Right,” he said, bracing his trembling body, girding his weary soul. “When you see the banks of Werowocomoco, drop anchor. I will go ashore.”

  A few hours later, with the shallop anchored once more off Werowocomoco’s shore, Smith boarded the landing boat alone. He ducked his head low as he rowed. A scattered shower of icy snowflakes blew across the river, tinkling like tiny crystalline chimes against the steel of his helmet. The shallop rested quiet and dark on the silver glass of the river. The men watched him in strained silence, hands gripping the shallop’s rail like the claws of birds, pale, bony, twitching.

  He expected a shout of alarm, the whip of arrows through the air, their hiss and quiet splash as they buried themselves in the water around his boat. But the woods were dead and still; there was no hint of voices or movement on the riverbank, or beyond in the lanes and commons of Werowocomoco.

  He landed the rowboat and paused, turning slowly, expecting the specter of an Indian warrior to loom over him, war club raised and face twisted in a rictus of hatred. But the shore was empty. Specks of icy snow gathered in the indentations of many footprints, dimples and pits in the black river mud.

  Smith made his way up the trail toward the capital, snaphaunce drawn and at the ready. A few birds chirped listlessly in the cold, bare branches of oaks and mulberries, but no human voice so much as whispered. He gained the great clearing, the communal flat of trampled earth. The huge stone ring of the central fire stood black and round as the eye of a mask. Its coals were raked flat. Not so much as a heat shiver stirred above the ashes; the fire was thoroughly extinguished. Under leafless shade trees, the lashed and bent sapling poles of houses arched naked in the wind. The bark-paneled walls were stripped away, leaving thin, lonesome skeletons of longhouses. Paler earth showed between the saplings, clean and flat, demarcating the remains of warm, dry floors, already gathering a dust-thin layer of ice.

  Smith moved cautiously toward the cellar pit of the nearest home. He lifted the cache’s lid, a light but sturdy contrivance made of woven branches and tight-lashed sinews. The pit was empty, the entire stock spirited away, down to the smallest bean and pumpkin seed.

  He moved from house to house, inspecting each cellar in turn, though after peering into the first few, he was certain he would find them all empty. Werowocomoco was deserted. Powhatan had taken everything. Not one crumb would be left to the pillaging monster the old chief had once called a member of his own family.

  Smith made his way to the site of one longhouse in particular. The mulberry spread above it, the familiar crooked limb reaching like the hopeless arm of a drowning man.

  Pocahontas had not only visited him in their days of friendship. Smith had also paid her several calls at Werowocomoco, bearing gifts for her and for Powhatan. He remembered her house, recognized it even with its bark stripped away, though without its covering the place looked decidedly less welcoming. The black saplings of its framework bent like threatening bows above the earth. Smith walked below the framework. He touched one arch with a tentative hand and then gripped the post hard. The cold dampness of the wood seeped into his skin. He remembered the previous winter, when this house had been warm and full of laughter. He remembered Pocahontas staring up at him with a furrowed brow, testing an English word, working at it with the determined confidence and natural alacrity he so admired.

  Boot, her voice said across a great distance, wool. Simple words, ordinary. They raised a terrible pang in his chest, a white, burning stab of loss and regret.

  Smith found the cellar outside the house Pocahontas had shared with her sisters and unmarried aunts. He pushed away the large flat stone that covered it. He thought he would find it as empty as the res
t of Werowocomoco’s caches, but something lay inside—a long chain of white beads, looped and twisted back upon itself, cast aside like the pale shed skin of a snake.

  He lowered himself into the cellar. The beads were frozen against the earth. They came away one by one as he tugged gently on the string. Smith held the beads up to the light. Through the stain of old mud he could see the red yarn peeking between the bright-white globes. He remembered stringing it for the girl, remembered speaking the words she taught him as he worked, her sly, testing smile, her clever fingers toying with the chain. Bid Pocahontas bring me two little baskets, and I will give her white beads to make her a chain.

  Smith slipped the chain of beads into his pouch. He climbed from the cellar pit and looked once more around the abandoned town. Hunched under the weight of memory, with a pain worse than hunger gnawing at his very center, he made his way back to the rowboat. With every step he clutched and kneaded the leather of his pouch. He felt the roundness and sameness of the beads, repeating in his hand the echo of a girl’s voice fading on a distant shore.

  Smith led his ragged troop through the palisade gate of Jamestown. The peaks of thatched roofs and canvas tents had gathered a crust of snow. In the trampled center of the fort, where the communal fire pit had once stood, a sturdy plane of dark-gray ice had formed over the mire of puddles and sucking mud. Jamestown was not a pretty sight—it never had been. But after the desolation of the abandoned Werowocomoco, the fort’s utilitarian ugliness seemed as delightful as a Turkish palace.

  Men rushed from the small, dismal cabins and hobbled from their tents, stiff with cold, their joints ablaze with the pain of malnutrition. A relieved cheer went up when the men spotted the baskets and jars of Pamunkey goods making their way through the gate.

  Smith pushed open the rickety door of the supply shed, eager to take stock. Combined with the dwindling stores Jamestown still possessed, Smith could stretch the Pamunkey spoils for several months. And during those months, he could finally rest. No more expeditions, no more raids, no women wailing in dismay, no mighty chiefs stripped of their dignity, brought low before the eyes of their people. Sleep, sleep and reflection, and the walls of Jamestown hiding John Smith’s gaunt, hot-eyed face from the New World.

  In the slant of light falling through the open door, Smith considered the storeroom. Empty crates and kegs were heaped in one corner, tipped on their sides, yawning. From among the pile of refuse, he heard a constant scuttling sound. The thick stench of rat piss permeated the dark room.

  Smith pried up the lid of the remaining barrel of oats. In the sudden burst of light, a nest of rats squealed and thrashed, leaping up the side of the barrel, and scampered into the shelter of the piled crates. Smith stared down into the barrel, his empty stomach roiling with disgust. There were as many pellets of rat droppings as there were oats. An uneven hole ringed by pale, gnawed wood showed where the pests had worked their way inside.

  “Christ,” Smith cursed. He pounded the lid back on the barrel, tipped it, and rolled it through the door and into the frozen commons.

  By now the dandies had gathered, expecting their dole of food. Their tailored woolens hung on their emaciated frames; they were thin as poppets in a wheat field and yet they had done nothing—nothing—to protect their last bit of food.

  Smith kicked the lid from the barrel. Oats and rat shit spilled across the ground.

  “Good God,” one of the gentlemen cried, “what do you think you’re about, Smith?”

  “Put down the food from the naturals,” Smith commanded his men. “Right here, in the commons. Not a kernel of corn shall go into that storehouse until the rats are all dead and the refuse cleared away.”

  A few of the dandies moved toward the baskets of beans, the hard winter squashes painted in bright, tempting splashes of orange and green. Smith drew his gun and trained it on them.

  “Not another step. You get nothing until the work is done. And properly, too, as it should have been done the whole time I was away. Look at you! The lot of you couldn’t kill a few rats? You might have eaten them even; only gentlemen do not eat rats. Is that the way of it?”

  Thomas Savage’s mouth twisted in a wry grin. The ship’s boy was stunted and small after his hungry years in Jamestown; Smith saw the truth of his assumption reflected in the boy’s face.

  “Savage, have you ever eaten a rat?”

  “Aye, Captain Smith. I eat ’em when I can catch ’em. They roast just like a bird. It’s the best use any of us has made of the storehouse since you’ve been away.”

  “We will all eat rat tonight,” Smith declared, “and what a feast we will have. There are dozens of them in that storehouse, feeding on your oats, making new generations of their kind to beggar Jamestown, while you gentlemen do nothing but lie in your tents pining for England.”

  “Watch yourself, Smith,” one of the gentlemen growled.

  “I do. I have. I’ve watched myself risk life and limb to secure food for you shiftless jackanapes. I’ve watched myself destroy all the good relations with the naturals, those bonds I worked so hard to create, all in the name of keeping you lot fed through the winter.”

  “You are not the president. Nobody has declared you president. By what right . . .”

  “By right of my wits,” Smith roared. “By right of my back, which I have bent in labor in the name of England and the Virginia Company, while you lot have slumbered like babes on your cots.” He clutched at the beads in his pouch, his fist locking around them convulsively; he could not drop the pouch, could not let go. “By right of the bonds I have forged and then shattered that you, undeserving curs that you are, might live.”

  Matthew Scrivener stepped forward. “If you must hear Smith declared president in order to respect his command, then I shall be the first to declare him.”

  “Aye,” said Russell, hulking above the Pamunkey baskets with his hand upon the strap of his musket. “And I declare him, too. I saw this man fight the king of the Pamunkeys, a great strong ox of a savage, hand to hand. I saw him work us free of two Indian traps, using naught but his wits and his words. Here is a president worthy of Jamestown if ever the place had one.”

  The men of his expedition raised their voices. “Aye! Aye, President Smith!”

  Smith was too incensed to feel any rush of triumph or pride. That they would prefer to lie in their cots, stoically awaiting death, rather than turn their fine, soft hands to labor . . . ! Christ help us all, for it’s clear we shan’t be bothered to help ourselves.

  Smith paced before the spilled oats, the baskets of fine Pamunkey wares. “There you have it, then. I am declared. By order of your president, not a man shall touch this food until the work is done, starting with salvaging these oats. Every rat dropping shall be picked from them, and the good grains will be packed away properly and stored. Half of you on the task. The other half will set to ordering the storehouse. Haul out the refuse. Stack it well away from the building. And kill any rat you find.”

  Most of the men set to their tasks quickly enough, though their faces darkened with resentment. Smith did not care.

  A few walked away and turned their backs on Smith, no doubt thinking to wait out the labor and help themselves to the food when it was done.

  “I tell you now,” Smith shouted, “and I shall tell you only once: he who shall not work shall not eat.”

  The gentlemen hesitated, looked around. Something in Smith’s voice caught and held them—a new note of command, the deadly assurance that he would follow through on his promise. Or perhaps it was his countenance, his wide-legged stance, the square of his shoulders, the way his hand clutched at his leather belt pouch like a soldier’s fist upon the hilt of a sword.

  One by one, the dandies of Jamestown gave in. They lent their hands to the labor, working in offended silence side by side with more honest men. Overseeing the work with a terse word and an imperative stride, John Smith
stalked through their ranks like a stone monument come to life. The mantle of president was new and sudden, but it hung with rightful ease around his neck.

  THE THIRD NAME

  Matoaka

  POCAHONTAS

  Season of Cattepeuk

  The season of running fish came again. Throughout the forests of Tsenacomoco, the tips of branches swelled with new growth, the promise of budding leaves hanging like green pearls in the treetops. Birds squabbled and tussled in thickets, warring for their minute territories, building soft new nests to woo their tiny wives. The woodlands thawed. Streams clamored in the deep cuts of their beds; the river swelled, and its current ran deep, fast, and cold, tasting of earth and tree roots. The falls, invigorated by the gush of thawing snow, filled the lanes and fields of Orapax with their distant but constant voice.

  For the first few weeks in Powhatan’s new capital, many days’ journey from Werowocomoco, the sound of the falls disturbed Pocahontas. It filled her days with an unsettled tension and her nights with strange dreams of talking spirits. The falls were a dangerous place, for they delineated the border between Tsenacomoco and Massawomeck territory. The Massawomecks were a frightening specter, armed with plenty of trade iron and steel, darting like lightning in their birch-bark canoes. They had no love for the Real People, and their nearness placed a constant strain on Powhatan’s subjects, women and warriors alike. And yet they were a preferable enemy to the tassantassas—to Chawnzmit, who had proven himself more reckless and cunning than any of them had suspected. Chawnzmit, the unpredictable leader of a band of starving beasts.

  At least the Massawomecks thought—and made war—like people. Theirs was a preferable sort of evil, a danger less sinister than living in proximity to white men.