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

by Paul Clayton

  Maggie looked at the other men who talked in a huddle. All she had to do was walk out a bit from her cover and they would see her, just come out of the shadow of the trees. One of them was particularly big and menacing. Who were they? And what would happen to her if she went with them back to England? She tried to remember the man who had chased them through London so long ago. She had never seen his face but he was big and threatening like this one. She remembered her fear and his threats and her heart began to pound. She backed further into the shadows. John White poked his stick about in the weeds as if attempting to startle some small animal. Catching his foot on a root or a loose rock, he stumbled and almost fell and she had to keep herself from crying out. The other men went over to him. Maggie studied them. Was her pursuer one of these? As she stared at the big, brutish-looking one, thoughts of Captain Stafford and his soldiers filled her head. The men continued to talk and John White pointed his stick in her direction. Her heart leapt and she shrank backward, knowing they would soon be coming toward her. Her heart racing, she watched for as long as she dared before finally turning to flee. Later she gasped for breath as she ran up to the dugout. Manteo looked at her blankly as she climbed in and sat.

  “Ghosts,” she said. “You were right. Let us go home.”

  Epilogue

  The child’s plaintive crying filled White with dread. He looked about in a panic. “Do you hear it?” he said to Captain Cocke.

  “Hear what?” said Cocke.

  “A child crying.”

  “I saw some doves earlier,” said Chandler. “They make a sound very much like a child crying.”

  “Nonsense,” said White. He pointed his walking stick at one of the trails that came out of the woods. “‘Tis coming from over there.”

  “Governor White,” said Captain Cocke, “there is nothing. We must go now. The weather is worsening.”

  “Aye,” said White reluctantly. He looked back over his shoulder at the fort as they started toward the boats. The crying seemed to be spirited about by the gusting winds. He would hear it, crisp and distinct, then it would go quickly away. Then another breeze would tickle his ears and he could hear it again. Thus it went all the way back to the boats.

  White stayed on the quarterdeck of the Hopewell as Captain Cocke prepared the ship to sail. A black mass had solidified in the northeast sky, growing steadily larger. Gusts of wind shot past, advance elements of the storm. After a while, the wind steadied and poured past them, moaning like a huge, wounded animal. White watched in awe as the sailors fought to put up canvas only to have the wind tear it from their bloodied hands. Some sailors strained at the capstan, winching up the anchor. White heard a crack as the cable snapped and the ship drifted dizzily landward. Cocke’s shouts barely rose above the wind as the men fought to turn the ship. White stared at the dirty brown of the banks, the surf frothing with the furies while the wind pushed them closer to shore. He waited for the sickening crunch of keel against sand, the tilt of the deck as the ship rolled over. The ship moved faster, the wind thrumming through the shrouds, and, to White’s amazement, Cocke managed to turn her. Now they ran parallel with the banks. White gave thanks to God as the Hopewell finally turned to open sea.

  The Hopewell drove south and east before the storm for half a day. White waited on deck in the wind and rain for Cocke to turn her back in to the coast and anchor her, but he never did. White entered the helmsman’s cabin and closed the door on the noise of the storm. He found Captain Cocke faced off against Chandler, the helmsman, and several sailors. They had obviously been arguing heatedly but grew quiet when White entered.

  “Tell him,” Chandler said.

  “What?” said White. “Why are we not heading to Croatoan?”

  “Let us go outside,” said Cocke. He led White back out into the wind-driven rain. Turning, he shouted into his ear. “They will not go to Croatoan. They are afraid.”

  “Of the storm?” said White. “Surely that is not it?”

  “Partly. They say you are a Jonah, sir,” said Cocke. “They want no more of you, Virginia, or Croatoan. They believe the whole effort is cursed.”

  “But surely you do not believe all that,” said White.

  Cocke shook his head. “Nay. But it matters not what I believe, Governor. I can not sail us there alone. Look!” Cocke pointed to the sea behind the Hopewell.

  White looked at the darkening sea in confusion. “What? What is it?”

  “The Moonlight has already turned back to England,” said Cocke. “We are alone. I have talked the men into wintering at Trinidad. We can try for Croatoan again in the spring.”

  As White stared at Captain Cocke he felt as if the storm had gotten inside of him and was tearing him asunder. He could find no words for the good Captain. The child started crying again.

  “In sooth, I am very sorry, Governor,” said Captain Cocke. “You must go below now.” Cocke went back inside the helmsman’s cabin.

  White remained outside as the storm grew more violent. Lightning rent the sky and thunder exploded around him. He stood on the quarterdeck, leaning against the bulkhead as the storm shook the little ship violently. The girl’s crying was a constant in his head now, like a toothache. But unlike a rotten tooth, he could not pluck it out, and the pain of it grew worse.

  White turned to look back at the helmsman’s cupola just as a bolt of lightning streaked down. In the flash he saw that the whipstaff had been lashed securely on either side. Captain Cocke, Chandler and the helmsman stared out, stark fear on their faces.

  White staggered forward toward the stairs. Someone shouted at him but the voice was lost in the roar of wind. Holding tightly to the rail, he slowly made his way. Lightning flashed and he saw he was alone on the deck, the others having sought the safety of the belowdecks. The girl’s incessant crying filled his head.

  “Begone!” he cried, but she heard him not and continued to wail forlornly. He moved forward slowly, tiny sparks of lightning flashing all around in the distance. Then a great jagged white bolt of lightning rent the air very close nearby. A thunderclap followed, disorienting him and blotting out the child’s crying. His ears rang as the wind and rain pummeled him. Soon the clanging sound receded and the girl’s crying returned with greater urgency.

  White shook his head and continued to make his way forward. The ship tilted downward as if going over a falls. In another flash he saw huge waves all around, rising like mountains of glistening black glass. They started racing dizzily down the slope of one and he held to the rail tightly. The ship shuddered as a sea broke over the bow and White fell to his knees. Foaming, angry seas assaulted him, threatening to wash him away. He pulled himself to his feet and went on. Reaching the bow, he tightly wedged himself between the bowsprit and the beakhead, forcing his legs under the ropes there. Putting his hand over the bible in his pocket, he thought of the passage he had read day after day, the passage that he had committed to memory. He had a vision of the girl’s tear-stained face before him as she pleaded with him. He shook the vision away and repeated the words he had read and pondered, hurling them up at the angry heavens, “…pray to the Father which is in secret; and thy Father who sees in secret shall reward thee openly.

  “This I have done!” White shouted at the heavens. He pointed his finger heavenward. “This I have done!”

  Lightning ripped across the sky, so bright he could see the bones in his upheld hand and arm. Rage filled him. “Well, drown me then and be done with it!”

  As if in answer, the ship again tilted downward dizzily. White’s hair blew backward as they gained speed. In a flash of lightning he thought he could see the rocky bottom of the sea as they raced down to their fate. At the last moment the ship righted itself, riding up on another violent wave crest. White saw the girl’s face again. Eleanor’s? Virginia’s? He could not say. The innocent eyes were full of sadness and pain and he convulsed with sobs. He vomited and after the dizzy spasm subsided he screamed again at the heavens.

  “What ever I
have done, I repent for it. I repent! I’ve prayed before you, pleaded with you, begged you! Yet still you torture me like a tomcat does his mouse. Send me to the bottom and put an end to my pain!”

  The storm and the night went on forever. White passed in and out of consciousness, alternating between violent, cursing spasms and bouts of tearful prayer. Weakened by the terrible power of the storm and his awful rage and fear, he would have washed overboard but for being so tightly wedged in between the beams of the beakhead and the ropes. Some time before daybreak the sea began to change. The ship’s violent pitching and shuddering lessened and the rain and wind began to lose its stinging vehemence.

  White came to consciousness. The rain had stopped and a warm wind sang steadily in his ears. He turned his head. Gray light gave the ship form. He heard a peal of laughter and had a vision of the girl running merrily through a garden. He was chasing her. She squealed in mock terror, turning her head to toss him a playful, catch-me-if-you-can look. Then she was gone and he heard her no more. She was happy and safe and he cried bitterly at her loss, his body racked with deep sobs. Strong arms gripped him from behind. Captain Cocke and Chandler pulled him backward off the beakhead and to his feet.

  White embraced Cocke and cried out. “All is well now, Captain. All is well.”

  Captain Cocke looked at him sadly.

  White laughed. “She is safe now, Captain. I tell you, she is safe and sound. You can take us home.”

  Cocke wordlessly helped White back to the waist. Cocke stole a questioning look at Chandler. White saw the exchange between the men and burst out in loud, joyous laughter.

  “Praise God,” said White, squeezing Cocke’s shoulder. “Praise God.”

  Cocke’s face was haggard and blank. He looked worriedly at Chandler and then back at White, allowing himself a small smile. “Aye,” he said. “God be praised. Let us go home.”

  Afterword

  The storm that prevented Governor White from reaching Croatoan blew the Hopewell so far out to sea that Captain Cocke decided to cancel the rescue mission entirely and return to England. Afterward, John White retired to his estate in Ireland where he died in 1605. There is anecdotal evidence of some of the Roanoke colonists having survived -- sailors on a merchant vessel that anchored in the area of Croatoan, supposedly spotted a tow-headed youth, ‘naked as a savage,’ in the reeds of a creek bank. The boy, said to be in his early teens, vanished before the sailors could moor their craft. In 1607, in the new colony of Jamestown, Captain John Smith and his colonists were approached by Powhatan and his braves with tantalizing stories of “English cottages” in the woods. Nails, shoe buckles and bones, said to belong to the Roanoke colonists, were bartered to the Jamestown settlers. But, try as they might, Smith and the Jamestown settlers could find no trace of the English people left behind at Roanoke, and so they disappeared, living on only as legend or as a page or two in the history books -- until now.

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to list the books that helped me in my understanding of the early colonial undertakings of the English in America. These books provided a wealth of background, detail, and perspective, and helped induce the fictive dream that sustained the writing of White Seed. They include:

  Bernard Sheehan, Savagism & Civility, Indians and Englishmen in Colonial Virginia

  Ivor Noel Hume, The Virginia Adventure, Roanoke to James Towne, An Archaeological and Historical Odyssey

  J. H. Elliott, The Old World And The New 1492 – 1650

  Samuel Elliot Morison, Christopher Columbus, Mariner

  Marjorie and C.H. B. Quennell, A History of Everyday Things in England 1500 – 1799

  J. H. Parry, The Age of Reconnaissance, Discovery, Exploration And Settlement 1450 – 1650

  Carl Bridenbaugh, Jamestown, 1544- 1699

  Robert Lacey, Sir Walter Ralegh

  Lloyd And Jenny Laing, The Picts and the Scots

  Brian Lavery, The Colonial Merchantman Susan Constant, 1605

  Joyce Youings, Privateering And Colonisation In The Reign Of Elizabeth I

  Helen C. Rountree, The Powhatan Indians of Virginia, Their Traditional Culture

  And, lastly, but most importantly,

  Thomas Harriot, A Briefe And True Report of The New Found Land Of Virginia. The complete 1590 edition with the 28 engravings by Theodor de Bry, after the drawings of John White and other illustrations. Reprinted by Dover Publications

  Other books by Paul Clayton:

  Calling Crow

  Flight of the Crow

  Calling Crow Nation

  Carl Melcher Goes to Vietnam

  Strange Worlds

  In The Shape of a Man

  The Blue World