White Seed: The Untold Story of the Lost Colony of Roanoke

by Paul Clayton

  “Raleigh!” he screamed drunkenly. “Where are my ships?” He ripped another piece of the canvas from the wall, balling it up and throwing it into the hearth. Raleigh would send him back to Roanoke, he vowed. He would dog the man’s footsteps, no matter where he went. Raleigh would hear him out. Let the gentleman put his head on a block if he must. But he would dog his every step until he gave him his ships.

  Panting from the exertion, White ripped another section of painting away and threw it into the hearth. As the flames engulfed it he collapsed on the floor.

  September 9, 1589. Roanoke

  Sir Robert Harvey stood on the ramparts with Ananias Dare, as Captain Stafford and his soldiers marched out of the gate below. Mortimer Reed and Bergman, the metallurgist, walked in their ranks, evidence that gold madness still possessed them. They headed for the trees. They would take the shallop across the sound and work their way west up one of the rivers. Robert counted the soldiers -- sixteen. That only left about forty to guard the fort. He was not comfortable with that but Captain Stafford had been insistent and, as usual, the others had gone along with him. Stafford’s two remaining mastiffs passed below, barking bravely and straining at their leashes.

  Ananias turned to Robert. “I would not want to be a savage confronted with the likes of those beasts.”

  Robert nodded, adding nothing further as he watched the soldiers and dogs disappear into the woods. With the colony’s fast-dwindling supplies of powder and shot, they would need more than two dogs and a couple dozen muskets to save them. Robert thought about what they all thought about constantly, and talked about increasingly -- namely that no ship would ever come here again. Be it due to storms or plague or war, the idea that they were totally on their own was slowly sinking into every man’s and woman’s mind. Only the maddening allure of gold could explain why the Devon gentlemen, and an otherwise smart military man like Captain Stafford, could not see it.

  “Are you ready?” Robert asked Ananias. Today they were to supervise a crew of men to fortify the rear of the palisade. Several of the timber uprights had begun to rot and needed replacing.

  Ananias nodded and they climbed down the ladder and went to collect the men. They found Lionel in front of the storehouse with Francis Smith, servant to Widow Bane, and Slade, the carpenter. All three men had axes over their shoulders. They nodded a greeting as Robert and Ananias came up.

  “Where are the others?” said Robert. “A dozen soldiers have been assigned to help with the work.”

  “The soldiers are loath to go,” said Lionel. “They are inside playing at cards.”

  Robert walked angrily into the storehouse, Ananias hurrying after him. Soldiers sprawled everywhere, many of them sleeping. Robert spotted the straw-haired lieutenant named Hawkins that Stafford had left in charge. The man sat against a hogshead, studying his cards. Robert walked up to him but Hawkins would not look up.

  “You were to supply a squad of men to help us.”

  “Fenner!” said Hawkins, still not looking up. “Take yer men and go with these gentlemen. They have work for yeh.”

  “But, Lieutenant,” complained the small bald headed man who lay on a mat of rushes, “we have only just now returned from guard duty!”

  Hawkins turned to the man angrily. “Off with yeh quick before I put me boot up yer arse!”

  The man used his musket to raise himself up wearily. “Biddle, Small, you others. Come with me. You heard the Lieutenant.”

  The men got slowly to their feet. Their eyes glaring barely disguised anger, they slipped their bullet bags over their shoulders and followed Robert and Ananias out of the storeroom.

  Robert led the way out of the fort. At the edge of the woods, he pointed out several tall pines to Lionel, and Lionel led six of the men over to the trees. The remaining soldiers sat in the shade. Soon the steady whack of axes filled the warming air.

  Robert walked off a bit, Ananias following.

  “The laziness of these soldiers is maddening,” said Ananias.

  Robert said nothing. It was worse than that. The soldiers exhibited a constant state of sullen resentfulness, punctuated with bouts of drunken, rowdy revelry. He believed that they were quickly moving beyond control, perhaps even beyond Captain Stafford’s control. And then what?

  Robert watched Lionel as he supervised the tree cutters and then called the remaining soldiers over. “‘Tis time to relieve those guarding the corn,” he said. Because of savage attacks and mischief, the Assistants had ordered a constant guard of five men be kept on this last cornfield.

  Robert and Ananias led the soldiers through the woods toward the seaward side of the island. As they neared the edge of the woods, Robert’s pulse quickened. The familiar lookout platform that rose from the field was gone. He increased his pace. A few moments later they came out onto the field and looked around in shock. Large areas of the field had been ripped up. Robert waded into it, Ananias and the soldiers following. As far as the eye could see, young green stalks of corn had been trampled underfoot. The wreckage of the lookout platform lay nearby. There were no soldiers to be seen, nor were there bodies, or any signs of fighting.

  “Christ’s blood!” cried Robert. “Who in God’s name was in charge here?”

  “‘Twas the Lieutenant’s friend, Richards,” volunteered one of the soldiers. “They returned to the storehouse a while ago to take a rest.”

  The other men said nothing, staring sullenly at the distant blue of the sea.

  “To rest?” Robert cried. He looked around. “The savages have destroyed our corn!” He knelt and picked up one of the stalks. Sun-warmed and moist, it still exuded a deep verdant green, but it hung limply from his hand. It was dying, and so were their chances here.

  Robert threw the stalk down and got to his feet. He started back to the fort, the others slowly following him.

  Robert stormed into the storeroom. Spotting Lieutenant Hawkins, he walked over and stood over the young man. “Where is this man, Richards, who you assigned to guard the corn?”

  Hawkins scowled. “Huh?”

  “Are you deaf, man?” Robert shouted. “The savages have trampled our corn. Destroyed it! Do you know what this means?”

  Hawkins threw down a card. “Aye. It means we shall have to take theirs.”

  “Christ’s blood!” said Robert. “Someone shall pay for this! And pay dearly.” He turned and marched angrily out of the storeroom.

  Across the sound in a clearing near the village of Warantan, Thomas Shande rested the butt of his musket on the ground, the barrel clenched in his hand. He watched the others digging in the soft earth and his hunger grew with the mounds of earth they threw up. Not far away, the captain and Bergman talked softly.

  Thomas tried to ignore the burning hunger in his belly. At dawn they had made a raid on a native village but had acquired nothing for their efforts. The natives had evidently anticipated their attack and removed all the corn from their storehouse. Captain Stafford now planned to surprise another tribe of savages in a village farther up river as they sat down to sup. If they refused to share their bounty, the captain had already declared his intention to boldly take whatever food the savages might be preparing and everything in their larders. Thomas warmed at the thought. The fool gentlemen would attempt to trade with the savages, but the captain knew how to deal with them.

  Thomas eyed the tree line. The village was somewhere on the other side and they would go there by shallop. He was happy the captain had chosen him to go, for that meant he would be one of the first to eat. A realization had been growing in Thomas for the past several months. There was no gold in this place. Now even a common man such as himself could see that. Sir Walter Raleigh and his gentlemen were wrong. Yet the Devon gentlemen were still consumed with dreams of finding the precious metal. And they continually risked his and others’ lives in their foolish, useless quest. It was corn that was gold. Thomas began salivating at the thought of a porridge. Perhaps the stories about England and war and plague were ind
eed true and no ships would ever call here again. The thought of being abandoned here forever horrified him and bonded him even more tightly to the captain and his soldiers, for only they knew how to survive in this place.

  Bergman walked over, then paused to consult his map.

  “You have had no luck, eh?” said Thomas.

  The foreigner smiled cannily, but said nothing. Then he called several men over to start a new hole. Thomas thought he saw something in the dense thicket. He heard a sound like the quick flight of a bird and turned to see Bergman clutching at an arrow protruding from his chest. His mouth formed an oval of surprise as he collapsed in a heap. Captain Stafford leapt behind one of the mounds of heaped up earth, shouting at them to fire into the trees. Thomas knelt and fired his musket. Shouted curses and musket thunder filled his ears and he coughed violently, fighting for breath. One of the mastiffs raced into the trees to lunge at a hideous, blue-black face.

  Thomas’s hands shook violently as he tried to charge the musket. Black powder spilt onto the ground and he prayed the captain had not seen it.

  “Fire!” the captain shouted. “Put fire into the trees where the savages have hidden themselves!”

  Thomas grabbed another cartridge of powder and tried to still his shaking hands. Just over their heads the arrows flit through the air like angry bees.

  “Pull back,” Captain Stafford bellowed. “Back to the shallop!”

  Before they could get to their feet, the attack ended. Captain Stafford stood and looked about. Nothing happened. The others soldiers slowly got to their feet. Mars came bounding out of the forest, blood on his jaws. “Jupiter!” Stafford called to the other mastiff, still somewhere in the forest. There was no answering bark. The drone of cicadas swelled with the heat.

  “Back to the shallop!” Stafford ordered.

  Thomas huddled in the forward part of the shallop, shivering in the rain. He was fevered and his shabby clothes were soaked through. They had not eaten in two days and the savages attacked them at every opportunity as they made their way down the slow-moving river. He listened vaguely to the conversation of the other soldiers as they worked the sail or poled the boat when the wind died. His head rested against the gunnel and the hollow tromp, tromp of their feet made a racket in his hot head. He heard the scratch of the captain’s remaining mastiff, Mars on the boards. Although Jupiter was never found, it was assumed he had been killed by the savages.

  Mars’ paws scratched the boards. The big dog put his front paws painfully on Thomas to see over the gunnel. Thomas cursed -- as if he were a bag of rags! He struck the dog a blow and it whined and moved away nervously. Thomas faded in and out of fevered sleep. In his stupor he heard Master Spencer shouting. Opening the door, he saw Maggie upon the table, her skirts hoisted up to her waist. “Filthy beggar!” the old man roared as he drove into her. She was smiling. Thomas awoke.

  Twilight waned and black night came on. The others talked softly as they poled the shallop to the bank. The rain had stopped and they were evidently going to camp upon the shore. Thomas thought of the dream and Maggie. He should have left her to the old man. How different his life would have been if he had. He’d be sleeping in his loft in London with a full belly, dry as a bug in a rug. And her -- Now she would not even talk to him, the ungrateful wench.

  He lifted his head painfully to watch the others climb out onto the bank. They spoke in hushed tones as they planned something in secret. Silence ensued and Thomas heard a yelp from the mastiff. A bit later someone climbed back onto the shallop. He raised his head and saw a dark form standing over him. It was Martin.

  “What is it?”

  “Captain Stafford has slaughtered his dog, Mars, so we can have meat.”

  Thomas’s love for the captain waxed mightily, giving him strength. In this awful place, only the captain offered any hope. Thomas forced himself to sit up. In his fever, he cursed the wretched place called Virginia, but he uttered his most vile epithets against the savage inhabitants.

  The crackling sounds of a fire reached Thomas’s ear as he fell in and out of sleep. Heavy boots clumped across the boards of the shallop towards him. The captain stood over him. “Here, lad,” he said, handing Thomas a steaming hunk of meat skewered on a stick. Thomas’s teeth tore into it, his eyes running with tears of joy and gratitude.

  ***

  The shallop sailed steadily through the misty rain across the sound. When Roanoke Island appeared, Captain Stafford called to the men sleeping on the boards. “Get up. I’ll have none of my men carried into the fort lest they be dead. Get up.” The nearest man did not move and he gave him a kick. The man cursed and Stafford left him and went to the prow to be the first one off. Something rolled under his foot and he looked down in the dim light at Mars’ leash. With a pang of sadness he bent down and grabbed it. He threw it into the water. He wanted no reminders of this bloody trip. Goliath came up beside him.

  “It will be good to stand before a fire and drink some boose.”

  Stafford nodded. “Aye.” Still angry over the failure of his mission, he said nothing further. The steady damp rain and the misery it brought took him back to Kilmore in 1579, and the hunt for John Fitzgerald and his Irish rebels. He had been just a sergeant in the field then and had no idea of the treachery that was about to befall them. Their commander, Lord Justice Drury, had foolishly substituted Irish scouts for his own English scouts, because the Irishmen knew the wastes and bogs of Kilmore. Stafford would never forget the great, impenetrable woods of Kilmore -- cold, damp, and eerie, with perpetual fogs and great dripping trees. The men and horses had already been worn to exhaustion just moving through the terrain. The rebels knew that and could have attacked at any time, but they cunningly let them slowly wear themselves out, following behind, gathering, waiting, flanking them. Stafford remembered his soldier’s joy at finally busting out of the forest into a clear pasture and open sky. As they assembled in the open, making ready to camp and rest, the rebels poured out of the forest all around -- wild Irish, hundreds and hundreds of them, bonaughts, more vicious than any red savage, and crazed Gallowglass, Scottish mercenaries, each one as wide at the shoulders as two of his own men, and armed with their deadly, six foot long battle-axes, one blow from which meant instant, blood-pulsing death. Hidden high in the trees, ranks of Spanish musketmen rained down volley after volley of lead balls upon them. The horses had nowhere to go and the massed, almost-naked rebels swarmed them, shrieking with laughter as they pulled English soldiers off their horses. Stafford could still see the face of the rebel he closed with. They crossed swords, forever it seemed, finally ending up wrestling on the ground. Stafford fought for a purchase on the man’s neck, but not before the rebel’s teeth found Stafford’s finger. The man’s eyes bulged like eggs as he bit down. Smiling, he spat Stafford’s finger into his face. Enraged, Stafford had summoned the strength to put his dagger into him. Then he and six others fought their way back into the forest, dragging Lord Justice Drury with them. They hid for two days while the Irish stripped the dead. Finally they made their way back to the English outpost at Kilmallock. After that he and his men had never again shown the Irish any mercy.

  “Sir?” came Goliath’s gruff voice.

  Captain Stafford opened his eyes.

  “Are yeh fevered?” asked the big man.

  Captain Stafford’s eyes blazed with hate and fury. “Prepare to land.”

  Chapter 31

  Parson Lambert dug in the sand with the others, searching for clams. As he lifted a shovel full of heavy sand he looked around. The good men and women of Virginia had gone from sound health to looking like London beggars. And he had not been able to help them. Even Manteo seemed on the verge of madness, confessing of his love for Maggie Hagger and his desire to marry her. Lambert had patiently explained to the Croatoan that such a union could never be sanctioned, urging him to look for a wife among his own kind. And Maggie had wanted him to hear her confession . . . in the Catholic fashion! Then she had told him of her past
with the young soldier, Thomas Shande, and her fear that he might have killed his master back in London, and of her guilt over wanting the man killed, for he had violated her earlier.

  Had he been a comfort to Maggie or Manteo? He was not sure and he said a brief prayer for them both. Surely God would soon heed their prayers? For two years now they had been in this place and they were slowly dying. He had already lost half his teeth and several of the remaining ones were loose. Most of the people suffered in the same way. Others, like his wife, were fevered and bedridden. Three had died in the last fortnight. Lambert wondered briefly if Captain Stafford had had any success this time in getting corn for them. He doubted it, realizing that this would mean another trip to Croatoan to ask Manteo’s people for corn. While there he would attempt to baptize more of the people, instructing others. And Manteo’s people always insisted on dancing, and feasting. The thought of the feasting almost sickened him. Feasting! While those in the fort lay hungry and sick in their beds. But to refuse to eat at the feast would be an insult to the Croatoans, and so he would eat. And not begrudgingly, but hungrily, and with great relish. And afterward he would hate himself for it.

  “Parson Lambert.”

  Manteo ran up behind him.

  “The Captain returns. Four men die and he bring back no corn. Master Harvey say you should come.”

  ***

  Robert Harvey puffed his pipe as he paced before the plank table in the big house. Parson Lambert and Ananias entered and sat. A few moments later Phillip Mattingly entered and took his seat. His face was grave. “Bergman has been killed along with three soldiers.”

  Parson Lambert shook his head sadly. “God have mercy! I will hold a service on the morrow.”

  Phillip said nothing further, staring sadly at the table before him.

  Robert Harvey noted the total absence of fat on Phillip compared with when they had first arrived. He looked little better than a sickly beggar, as did they all. But Captain Stafford and his soldiers still radiated strength and vitality. They had to have been stealing more corn and meat from the savages than they were bringing back. They must be stockpiling it in a secret location. And they were looking more savage than the savages, with their shell necklaces, colored feathers, and slovenly ways. It reinforced Robert’s earlier realization that in this place, one’s station, wealth and education counted for less with each passing day. Why could not the others see this? It was a wretched New World where brute strength and animal cunning were the only determinants of success.