Roanoke (The Keepers of the Ring)

by Angela Hunt

  “Such a little suffering, and yet you are ready to die?”

  She opened one eye. Thomas stood above her, taller than ever, with reproach clearly written on his face.

  “Go away,” she muttered into the sand. “You can’t know how this feels. There’s nothing like it in England, and I wouldn’t wish this even on you, though you probably deserve it.”

  He knelt beside her and lowered his voice. “Why would I deserve it?” he asked, an odd mingling of wariness and amusement in his eyes. “Have you at last come to regret our marriage?”

  “I will if you don’t leave me alone!”

  He surprised her by laughing. She had never heard him laugh, and the honest and free sound made her feel better even as it made her angry.

  “I’ll get you some water,” he said, casually brushing wayward tendrils of hair from her forehead so he could see her face. “And they’re serving sea turtle soup, so I’ll bring you some. If your stomach rebels from the fruit, perchance some meat will help you regain your strength.”

  “No. I can’t eat—”

  “You don’t have to take it. But I’m your husband, and responsible for you, so let me do my duty and bring what you require.”

  She groaned and clenched her hands as another spasm gripped her stomach. Thomas left, but returned a few moments later with food and a shell filled with water. He insisted she drink the water and held the scalloped shell to her lips, then he put his hand behind her head and held her upright as he offered the tortoise.

  The sight and smell of the food assailed her nostrils, and Jocelyn refused it. The pressure of his hand on her head lingered a moment, then Thomas gently lowered her to the ground and sat in the sand next to her. As they stared at the stars in the Caribbean sky overhead, she retched and shuddered and sweated the poison from her system as he talked of the adventure of finding the giant sea turtle and how it had required sixteen men just to carry it back to camp. He talked of the sea, of the vastness of the ocean reaches, and “the glory of circling God’s wondrous globe with the wake of a ship, like a ribbon about a pomander orange.”

  Before he had finished, she slept.

  After their three disastrous days on St. Croix, Simon Fernandes sent Captain Stafford and the pinnace to Vieques Island to find sheep, while the Lion guardedly put into port near the Spanish fort at Puerto Rico to take on fresh water. Jocelyn’s uncle complained that Fernandes had made yet another poor decision, for the seamen consumed more beer during their Puerto Rico stop than the colonists gained in water.

  White personally believed the sea captain’s excessive drinking was born of his vexation that the flyboat, which he had maliciously abandoned during the storm off the coast of Portugal, had arrived at Dominica only two days behind the Lion. Apparently Captain Edward Spicer was as good a pilot as Fernandes, a fact that greatly cheered White. If not for Fernandes’ indisputable expertise and the authority granted him by the colony’s charter, White would gladly have had the man imprisoned for endangering the colony with his foolish quest for treasure.

  As the Lion weighed anchor to leave Puerto Rico, John White discovered another insult—two colonists, Darby Glavin and Dennis Carrol, had crept off the ship with Fernandes’ sailors and had not returned. Both were Irishmen and Catholics; White suspected immediately that the two were spies for the Spanish, and considered briefly that perhaps even Fernandes was somehow in league with the deserters.

  Governor White called a meeting of his assistants on the lower deck. White also invited John Jones, a doctor, and the Reverend Thomas Colman to sit in the council meeting, and Jocelyn slipped into a quiet spot behind the circle of men to satisfy her curiosity about the colony’s future and to further observe her husband.

  Thomas Colman conducted himself with dignity in the meeting, giving clear, concise answers when called upon to speak, and the other assistants listened respectfully to his opinions. “Surely these two deserters pose no real danger to us,” Thomas said, nodding to John White. “They are but two men—what harm could they do?”

  “You don’t know the Spanish,” Simon Fernandes interrupted, squinting in amused condescension. “The poxy Spanish dogs have been searching for our outpost at Roanoke for years. Why should they allow a base for English privateering ships that plunder Spanish treasure? If these men tell the Spanish of our plans for a colony at Chesapeake, you can be sure the Spanish will feel well of a mind to destroy it.”

  Jocelyn felt her blood run cold at his words. Was it not enough that the colonists might face the fury of nature and fierce Indians? Would they have to face the pole axes of Spanish soldiers as well?

  “God will protect us from the Spanish.” Her husband’s iron voice rang in the stillness of the circle, and no man dared refute him.

  John White glared at Fernandes, then capably changed the subject. “I worry about the loss of Glavin’s experience. He was with me at Roanoke in the last venture, and knows much about the land, the Indians, and soldiering.”

  “We have the benefit of your experience,” Ananias Dare spoke up. “And we have your journals from the first expedition. And we are yeomen and families, not soldiers interested in exploration. We want only to make our homes and plant our crops in fertile land, and we can do that as well in Chesapeake as we could in England.”

  “Aye,” several voices agreed.

  “We will do better in Virginia than in England,” White answered. “We are planning to pick up orange, pineapple, banana, and mammee apple plants on another of these islands. I saw them on my previous journey and know where they can be found. Cattle and salt we will find at Rojo Bay, if—” he glared again at Fernandes, “our captain chooses to stop so we may fill our stores.”

  Fernandes bowed his head before the assembled company. “The safety of my ship comes first, always,” he said, his dark eyes glinting with malevolence. “But surely these things can be arranged.”

  “After our stores are filled, then what?” The elder George Howe asked. “Are we free to sail to the Chesapeake? Already ‘tis July, and I have heard that fierce storms sweep across these waters in late summer.”

  “We have but one other stop,” White said. “After our departure from Roanoke, Grenville left a holding party of fifteen soldiers on the island to hold the land for England. I believe those lads are eager for home, so we’ll stop at Roanoke and transfer them with us to Chesapeake.”

  “Will they join us in the colony?” John Jones asked.

  “‘Twill be their decision to join us or return to England,” White answered.

  “If it please you, sir, I have a question.” John Sampson, a young assistant, spoke up. Jocelyn knew he had left his wife and small daughter waiting in London, though his twelve-year-old son accompanied him on the journey.

  “Ask it, John.”

  Sampson looked uneasily at the floor. “I have heard, from the seamen, that the Chesapeake Bay Indians are more highly organized and warlike than those of the Roanoke area. One sailor told me of a company of Jesuits who were exterminated over ten years ago. And ‘tis common knowledge that the Chesapeake savages attacked Amadas and his men in eighty-four. ‘Tis rumored that the savages ate those they killed.”

  John White snorted in contempt. “Ridiculous. Impossible. Whether they live on Roanoke or in the Chesapeake region, savages can be cruel, but they are not cannibals. We go in God’s hands, John Sampson, and we will trust his providence and our own good sense. If we treat the savages with kindness, with such will we be treated.”

  “Let us go forward, then!” George Howe said, raising a fist into the air.

  “Aye!” several of the men shouted.

  John White smiled and held up his hand. “God has not only seen fit to supply us with yeomen, coopers, a doctor, a lawyer, and a sempstress, but he has sent one of his ministers.” He turned to Thomas. “Will you lead us in prayer, Reverend? Invoke the blessings of God upon us, Thomas, for we will need them in the days to come.”

  Jocelyn felt her heart stir with pride as
Thomas stood, tall and confident, and bowed his head. Even the sailors above stopped singing as his resonant voice filled the ship, beseeching God to show mercy and grant grace to those who traveled in his name.

  John White’s pretense of friendliness with Simon Fernandes vanished immediately after the meeting. On deck the next day White pointed out the island where they should stop for the tropical fruit trees he wanted to gather; Fernandes said such a stop was impossible, but he could procure plants and cattle for them on the island of Hispaniola where a Frenchman called Alencon would give them supplies.

  On July fourth, Fernandes sailed past the island of Hispaniola without stopping, and when White thundered onto the bridge and demanded to know why the ship had not anchored, Fernandes said he had suddenly remembered that Sir Walter Raleigh had told him that the King of Spain had captured Alencon. Without an ally, a stop at Hispaniola would be useless.

  White demanded another stop. Fernandes had promised that salt, essential for food preservation, would be found near Cape Rojo, but there was none. White persisted in voicing his grievances, and Fernandes finally agreed to stop in the Caicos Islands. After anchoring, the landing party filled the shallop and went ashore. Once on land, Fernandes withdrew with a pretty maid while the men desperately sought saltpans and hunted for fresh meat. No salt was found, but several men did catch swans, which were roasted on the beach for the meat-hungry colonists.

  The only consolation for the tired and frustrated colonists lay in the knowledge that the next land they would see would be the shores of Virginia.

  THIRTEEN

  On July sixteenth the Lion and the pinnace came to an anchorage off what Fernandes believed to be Croatoan Island, but White insisted the captain had made a mistake. After three days, Fernandes agreed, and led the way further up the coast. The ships were almost wrecked on the breakfront off Cape Lookout, but due to the great vigilance of Captain Stafford in the pinnace, the ships pulled out to sea in time and finally anchored outside the narrow barrier islands on July twenty-second.

  Looking at the narrow strip of brown land that bordered the ocean, John White knew he could never mistake this coastline for any other. He had last seen it one year before, on the day when Ralph Lane’s expedition had fled from their guilt and certain destruction. The beach looked today just as it had on the morning of their ill-fated journey to the Indian camp, on the first day of June, 1586.

  The hard fist of fear had squeezed John White’s stomach as the aroma of an Indian woman’s breakfast stew wafted by on a breeze. What are we doing here? A bird warbled in the brightening treetops; the tinkling sounds of children’s laughter rose through the ghostly morning mist of the forest.

  The man to his right stepped forward and John felt the rigid slap of his leather scabbard on his right leg as he followed his fellow soldiers into the clearing. If Sir Walter Raleigh had named me governor instead of Ralph Lane, we’d be sitting down for a peaceable meal instead of running to war.

  At the sight of the uniformed English emerging from the woods, a gaggle of naked Indian children scattered from their games to join their mothers. The circle of warrior-counselors around the aging chief’s fire stilled their voices and gazed impassively at the approaching English men.

  Ralph Lane stepped briskly forward to face Pemisapan, the chief of this and many other Indian villages. The Englishman wore the full uniform of Her Majesty’s Governor of Roanoke, expressly designed to intimidate, and arrogance lay in the jut of his jaw as he faced the Indian leader.

  Pemisapan kept his face clear under Lane’s hot glare. “Hear me, Pemisapan,” Lane bellowed, addressing himself more to the camp than to the chief. “Last night your men fired upon us.”

  Pemisapan did not answer, but folded his arms across his bare chest. One of the Indian counselors spoke: “In the night, four of our warriors were killed by the long guns.”

  Lane ignored the comment. “Hear me, Pemisapan, and know that we have learned of your dire conspiracy. We will not be driven into the sea; we will not vacate this land. We will not sit idly by while you and your fellows scheme to murder every Englishman and servant of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth.”

  At the mention of the queen’s name, Pemisapan lifted his hand as if he would speak, but Lane never gave him that chance. “We will not surrender because in the Queen lies our glory and in Christ our victory!”

  The signal! Lane’s words rang through the camp with the force of a cannon, and the thirty Englishmen drew their weapons. White fumbled with his unwilling sword and pulled it from its dark leather sheath as the keening wail of women and children rose around him. The arm that held his sword rose stiffly, his feet took a troubled step forward.

  Before him, a dark-haired woman snatched her child to her breast. White looked past her to the governor, and felt his mouth go dry as Lane raised his musket to his shoulder and fired directly at the chief. A cloud of white rose in the confusion, a bright red flower bloomed in Pemisapan’s chest, and the chief crumpled like parchment in tongues of fire. The council members by his side rose, too late, to gather their weapons.

  The woman before White ran for shelter, and he whirled and held his sword toward a fiercely painted warrior grasping a battle club. For an instant their eyes met, and White felt himself pleading with unspoken words: Please. I don’t want to kill you. The warrior swung his club in answer, filling the air with his blood-curdling death song. White parried the blow with his sword and obeyed the soldier’s instincts bred into him years before. His sword bit into the unprotected target of the warrior’s chest, and White looked away as the man fell to the ground, still rasping his eerie song.

  Around him the other English responded as one with swords and muskets. Several fired in the heat of the moment as women and children bolted toward the woods. “Don’t shoot the Croatoans,” Lane’s voice called above the din. “We have promised Manteo that his brethren would escape unharmed.”

  English guns quickly stilled the Indian warriors who did not resist. Within ten minutes the dreadful sounds of gunfire and pain had faded to the meowing wails of children and the dry sobs of grief-stricken women.

  White sheathed his bloody sword and surveyed the damage. Pemisapan lay motionless on the ground, still surrounded by aged counselors who sat mute in the paralysis of astonishment. Governor Lane, swaggering in victory, handed his musket to his servant and moved toward the prone body of the chief. White felt a sudden quickening of his heart. Was it his imagination, or did Pemisapan stir?

  “Hold there, Governor,” he called, stepping forward. “The man lives.”

  “No,” Lane answered, grinning over his shoulder. “I shot the savage myself, and at close range.”

  A log suddenly shifted on the smoldering fire in front of the fallen chief, and a dense plume of smoke rose like an angry flower amidst the carnage. The sight distracted Lane’s attention for a moment, and in that instant the wounded chief rose to a crouch, his hands upraised like the curved talons of an eagle.

  Lane took a step back and motioned to his servant. The boy, an Irish lad of thirteen, dropped the unloaded musket and fumbled with the heavy arquebus tucked into his belt. Pemisapan’s dark eyes shifted from Lane’s outstretched hand to the gun, and after a moment of hesitation, the chief wheeled and flew toward the woods. Lane’s Irish boy, the weapon now in hand, cocked the governor’s gun and fired at the Indian’s back. Pemisapan flinched; his back flowed with blood, but still he ran.

  Two of Lane’s soldiers roared in frustrated fury and sprinted after Pemisapan. Lane watched them go and frowned. “I fear we will lose those two today,” he muttered to no one in particular. “This savage Pemisapan’s barbaric warfare holds the advantage in the woods.”

  “The result will be as God wills, but I wish we had not resorted to bloodshed,” Thomas Hariot answered, frowning at the bloody scene before him as he leaned upon his musket. Hariot possessed one of the most scientific and mathematical minds of all Europe, and as always, White noted, he offered a rational opinion
. “For ‘tis possible,” Hariot went on, glancing to White for support, “that Pemisapan did not conspire to wound us, but merely strove to protect his own people.”

  Lane cut Hariot short with a harsh glance. “There was a conspiracy against us, I can assure you,” he insisted, his index finger forcefully punctuating his words in the air. “The Indian boy we hold hostage told me of the plot against us.”

  Hariot did not answer, but glanced again at White as if to ask how do you reason with the unreasonable? White knew he ought to say something, but he was less skilled than Hariot in dealing with people. As long as Ralph Lane was governor, there was no proper way to protest the bloodshed they had wrought.

  He turned from Hariot’s gaze and looked around. Several Indian women clutched their frightened children and cried softly, others knelt by the bodies of their warriors and tore handfuls of hair from their heads. One group of Indians stood unmolested in a knot, but stared at the scene around them with bewilderment and a vague sense of shame in their eyes.

  Croatoans. Manteo’s friends, probably, and therefore allies. But how long would they be friendly if they knew we are capable of such harshness?

  One tall brave among the Croatoans looked familiar, and after a moment White remembered that the warrior was the son of a chief from Manteo’s village. The warrior lived in the village where White and Hariot had dwelt for some weeks to learn the language. They had spent weeks among the savages, searching out native plants and medicinal herbs, and they had come away from the experience with a profound respect for the Indian culture and simple way of life. The Indians, White knew, understood vengeance and war. They did not understand conspiracy, for each tribe looked after its own affairs.