Serpent Never Sleeps

  I cautioned her to be quiet. "Do not talk aloud. If you have anything to say, whisper. Better yet, remain silent."

  Everything worked well for a time, albeit she was bursting with excitement. By a slit in the door that let in a sliver of light, I could see her eyes shining. She pressed my hand. We were conspirators in league against the world's awful things. We listened to the sounds of sailors on the deck, to those in the rigging, to the voices on shore bidding the ship farewell.

  I saw the glint of two small eyes before Humility did. We were lying on coils of rope. The eyes shone out from the folds of a tattered sail. In the dim light they looked like beautiful gems, like twin rubies.

  With one hand I quietly opened the door and with the other shook the sail. It was a mistake. I should have done nothing. The rat was at home among the canvas folds. At my rash act, it scurried across Humility's chest, down a leg, over a foot, and out the door.

  Her screams followed it. I closed the door and took her in my arms and waited. I didn't wait long. I heard running steps. Then the door flew open and a bewhiskered young man stood staring down at us.

  "Behold," he said with some surprise. "What do we have here?"

  "Stowaways," I said weakly.

  "Upon my word, upon Poseidon's golden spear," he said, "if it's not Serena Lynn and little Humility!"

  I recognized him. He was an assistant to Lord De La Warr. "Mr. Bertram," I said, "please close the door and let us be."

  Mr. Bertram pondered. He stuck out his tongue and wet his lips. I believe that he would have closed the door and gone his way had it not been for the two sailors who came at that instant for the coil of rope we were sitting upon.

  As it was, he helped us to our feet, escorted us to the gangplank, and waved us good-bye.

  TWENTY

  Lord De La Warr sailed from Jamestown the next day. I watched his ship leave the riverbank while drummers beat on their flag-draped drums, himself propped against a bulwark, waving his braided hat. It was a bitter sight to see the ship gaily disappear in the morning haze, alas, without me. Yet it only strengthened my resolve to leave Jamestown. There would be other chances, other ships that sailed for England.

  A chance seemed to come sooner than I expected. Lord De La Warr had left his kinsman, Sir George Percy, in charge of the colony. In desperation, Sir George decided once more to try to find Pocahontas.

  He sent forth three bands of scouts to search her out. One band went up the James to the mountains where it began. Another searched the Pamunkey River, still another the land of the Nansemonds. All returned with wildly conflicting stories.

  Pocahontas had quarreled with her father and fled after I left Werowocómoco. Her father was interested in improving trade with the Patawamake, members of his confederacy, and had sent her north as an agent of good will. She was not an agent but had gone to live with the Rappahannocks because she had married one of their young men.

  Sir George was confused, so confused that he did nothing. This was another bitter disappointment. I bided my time.

  In May, Captain Argall, who had ferried De La Warr back to England, sailed up the river with a fleet of six tall ships and a warrior to take the colony from Percy's faltering hands.

  The new leader was Sir Thomas Dale, a general who had gained a reputation for bravery in the Flanders War. He strode ashore surrounded by fifty liveried attendants, much as Lord De La Warr had before him. But there was a difference in his measured steps and the fiery glances he cast to right and left.

  "He's been warned," Tom Barlow said. "He's been told about the First Supply fleet and the Second Supply. And Lord De La Warr has told him what happened to the Third. He knows now what to look for."

  Dale was an imposing figure, long in the legs, broad in the chest, florid-faced, with a blunt chin half-hidden in a starched white ruff.

  "He looks determined," Tom Barlow said. "That's good. De La Warr had to give up before he ever got started. There's hope, I think."

  I had few predictions or hopes concerning Sir Thomas Dale and what he could or would do to save the perishing colony, though I was most certain he'd fail as the others had failed—that hundreds of colonists would die as they had died in the past. Yet I did have one consuming thought. It was that Humility and I would not be among the dead!

  We followed Sir Thomas and the three hundred newcomers to higher ground where the church had stood.

  He gave no speech and refused the Reverend Bucke when prayer was suggested. He strode through the ashes of the five-cornered garrison, talking to himself, then repaired to his flagship and was not seen for days.

  Rumors spread. Appalled by what he had seen, Sir Thomas had given up. He was making ready to leave for London. But on the third day he reappeared and called everyone together. In a short proclamation, reading quickly in thin but arrogant tones, he imposed martial law upon the colony.

  Death was the penalty for disrespect to the king or his representatives. Thieves would be branded or have an ear lopped off. Those who robbed the house where food was stored could expect to be tied to a tree and left to starve. Deserters would be burned, broken upon the wheel (he had brought a wheel with him), staked out in the weather, or shot.

  The lord marshal's laws were strictly carried out.

  By summer, all the laws had been broken and all of the culprits punished, including Francis Pearepoint, gentleman, who lost an ear for announcing that he had signed a contract to search for treasure, not to wield a hoe. And Emma Swinton, who was tied to a tree and forced to stay a week in rain and shine, in an effort to silence her clacking tongue and dire predictions.

  The laws of Marshal Dale became known as the Laws of Blood. Yet good things came out of this reign of terror.

  Deciding that Jamestown was located in an unhealthy place that was very difficult to defend against Indians or Spanish raiders, he began a town some miles up the James, which he called Henrico, in honor of noble Prince Henry. Carpenters worked day and night to build it.

  The new town lay on a high bluff beside the river, surrounded on three sides by the richest of farmland. Tom Barlow was one of the first to apply for land and the second, after John Rolfe, to receive a parcel, a small one beside a pretty stream that ran quietly into the James through a grove of yellow pines.

  Tom cut down trees and, with the help of neighbors whom he promised to help later on, built a one-room cabin with a stone fireplace ten feet wide. The men built it in a week, working on Sunday, which distressed Tom greatly.

  He came down the river in his canoe and invited everyone at the fort to partake in a housewarming. Emma Swinton and Humility and I were the only ones from the fort who came.

  It was a cloudless day. Wildflowers were blooming on the land Tom hadn't yet tilled and the air smelled of them and yellow pines.

  We stood outside the cabin, the three of us from the fort and several soon-to-be neighbors who were working on another cabin in Henrico. Tom read something from the Bible, we all prayed, and then we went inside. I gasped and exclaimed how beautiful it was, the way the pine logs fit together so snugly.

  "The fireplace's big enough to roast a whole deer," I said to please Tom, who was perspiring with pleasure.

  "You'll not do much cooking without a trestle and some tongs and big iron pots," Emma Swinton said.

  "Those will come later," Tom said. "Maybe soon, with the next supply ships."

  "If you're alive by then," Emma said. "I heard Indians when we were outside. Hiding in the trees somewhere."

  "They're curious."

  "Waiting," Emma said, twisting her mouth.

  "To make friends," Tom said.

  "Waiting for the right time to scalp you and burn your cabin down," Emma said.

  Tom smiled and pointed to a musket sitting in a corner, "I'm ready, and everyone in Henrico will be ready," he said, "and the Indians know it."

  Cheers went up from seven men. Their wives, I noticed, were silent.

  Tom served the currant cake I had made and a jug
of milk the others brought. A young man played a harmonica and Tom played his viola, but nobody danced except Humility and me. The rest, being mostly members of a strange sect that thought dancing sinful, looked on with disapproval.

  A little later, the Henrico people trooped off through the woods together, the men shouldering their primed firelocks. Emma, Humility, and I went down to the canoe.

  But just before we pulled away, I remembered I had left my cake pan, the only pan I owned, behind. I slipped out of the canoe and ran back to get it. As I came out of the cabin, holding the heavy pan across my chest, Tom was by the door.

  "You look pretty in the doorway," he said, "with the sun bright and shining in your hair. But you look pretty anywhere, rain or shine."

  I closed the door and started off down the path that led to the river. Tom took the pan and fell in step beside me.

  "We've known each other for some time," he said, taking a dozen steps to say these few words. "I've been thinking, since the cabin is finished and everything's ready except a few pots and things, that it would be fine for us to be man and wife together."

  We were nearing the river. I took the pan from him and was silent.

  "I guess it's a surprise," Tom said, "my speaking this way."

  I was not surprised. He'd been thinking about marriage for a long time, not just since the cabin was finished. Since we landed in Jamestown. Before that, in Bermuda. And perhaps even before that, on the ship. The cabin gave him the courage to speak.

  "You don't have to give your answer today," he said. "The cabin's not ready yet. It needs things. Chairs. A bench. A table. And a proper bed—I've been sleeping on a pile of cornhusks. Glass for the window, and a curtain, too. We need a curtain badly. You could choose the color you like best. The Indians are curious about the window, having seen none before. They come up and look. All times of day. Put their noses inside and just look."

  I didn't answer. The cake pan was getting heavy so I shifted it from one hand to the other.

  "Leave it. 'Twill be a covenant between us," he said. "I'll hang it on the wall by the fireplace."

  I gave him the pan and walked on toward the river. A four-pronged buck crossed our path and bounded away through the trees.

  "Just the right size to roast in the fire," Tom said. He gave me a quick glance, aware that I was silent. "You're not worrying about food? About the Starving Time? We'd never want here in Henrico. The forest's full of deer and such. It's not like the swamps at Jamestown."

  It was very quiet as we came to the trees that bordered the river. Then there was a sound, a high-pitched stuttering sound. I'd heard it before.

  "Turkey cock calling its mate," Tom said.

  "Indians make that sound, too," I said.

  "You don't need to fear the Indians any more than the starving."

  "I don't fear either one."

  "What is it then? Why are you so silent, walking along with your eyes on the ground?" He stopped, reached out and lifted my chin. "It isn't that Rolfe fellow occupying your mind, is it?"

  John Rolfe was one of the neighbors who had come to the housewarming, a nice, well-spoken young man. I had been with him and Mistress Rolfe when their baby died in Bermuda. And after his wife died in Jamestown, he had been attentive to me.

  "I saw him hovering over you today, smacking his lips over your cake."

  "It was terrible cake," I said, to get his thoughts off John Rolfe. "The flour was weevily and I had only a spoon of molasses and the fire went out twice while it was baking."

  "But Rolfe thought it was wonderful tasty, ate most of it." Tom rubbed his forehead. "Oh, I understand well enough how you could be taken with him. He's handsome and a right proper gentleman. And now he's got a big parcel of land all planted out."

  John Rolfe didn't like the rough Indian tobacco and had gotten his hands on some tobacco seeds from the West Indies.

  "The tobacco he's raising is far better than what the Indians raise," Tom said. "He'll soon be making money. I haven't even planted my fields yet." He thrust out his brown hands and square wrists. "But that time is not far away."

  Through the trees the river came into view, winding slowly to the sea. A south wind had sprung up, rustling the trees. The turkey call sounded again and was answered from the far shore of the river.

  "In the name of all that's good," Tom asked, "what is it? What makes you hold back?"

  "Everything," I said. "The awesome forests that go darkly on forever. The sounds of things that lurk there. The river that winds on and on soundlessly. The nights that smother you with stars. The summer's scorching suns. The winter days of driving snow. The dying and the dead. Jamestown and Henrico and Virginia! Everything!"

  Tom looked away. He was hurt. His hurt would have been deeper had I said that though Anthony Foxcroft was dead, I had not forgotten him, nor would I ever.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Once the rebuilding of Jamestown and the building of Henrico were well under way, Marshal Dale acted swiftly in the search for Pocahontas.

  During the winter, he had read the reports Governor Percy had gathered. He was certain that she was living somewhere on the Potomac River or one of its tributaries. Why she was there did not matter, nor whether she wanted to return to Jamestown. What mattered was that she be found as quickly as possible and reunited with her father before the storehouses ran dry and the colony starved.

  He called Captain Argall and me to the fort, which he had rebuilt and armed with rows of cannons. We reached his quarters by a long flight of steps in the shape of a corkscrew and came out breathless, into a large room stuffed with armor. The walls were decorated with crossed swords and flags, mementos of Marshal Dale's campaign in Flanders.

  We found him standing at a small window, really a gunport, looking down upon the river and Captain Argall's ship.

  "You were on the Potomac only a few months ago," he said to the captain. "And before that, sent by Lord De La Warr. Both times you were treated well?"

  "Yes, and fortunate in making the acquaintance of Japazaws, king of Pastancie. The king was well disposed toward me because years ago he was befriended by Captain John Smith. It was the reputation of Smith among the Patawamake that made it possible to bring back eleven hundred bushels of splendid corn."

  "Unfortunately gone, consumed weeks ago," said Dale. "You also brought three hostages and left one with Japazaws, an Ensign Swift, as proof of good will. But more important, you brought news of Pocahontas."

  "Rumors."

  "But believable ones."

  "At least a shadow of the truth," Captain Argall said. "She's somewhere in the vicinity, possibly on one of the creeks, but not on the river, because I was there. The Indians along the creeks are extremely dangerous."

  "Can you navigate the creeks?" Dale asked.

  "Not in the Treasurer. She draws close to nine feet. But I could if I carried a longboat."

  "When can you sail? The earliest? As you know, our storehouses are almost empty."

  "There's a leak to attend. A list to the mainmast. Work on the rudder. This is Monday. Say in a week."

  "Kindly get at it," Thomas Dale said. He waited until Argall had left, standing at the gunport until he saw him climb the ship's ladder, before he spoke to me.

  "I have called you," he said, "because I hear that you have met and talked to Pocahontas. Is that right?"

  "Yes, sir. At the Powhatan temple in Werowo-cómoco."

  He gave me a dubious glance. "From what I heard of your trip I expected to find an experienced woman. But before me stands a mere maiden. How old are you?"

  "Nineteen, sir."

  "God befriend me! This is not a frolicsome day in the country, an English picnic. This is an Indian mission fraught with danger, as Captain Argall testified."

  "No more dangerous than life in Jamestown," I replied, fearful that my chances had slipped away. "Captain Argall sailed the Potomac twice and has told us that he was well treated there."

  "Captain Argall was on a different mis
sion. He was trading beads and bells for food. This has nothing to do with trade. We are on a search in strange waters. Our quarry is a proud, headstrong girl protected by powerful friends. She can't be captured by force and hauled away to Jamestown. She must be persuaded, ever so gently, to join us."

  "I agree. I'll talk to her gently and kindly."

  "In what, the King's English?"

  "She does speak some English, sir. But since that time, I have studied some of the Indian dialects. There are six captives here at the fort and I've learned from them."

  Marshal Dale looked impressed. To further impress him, I added, "Also some of the languages spoken around the Potomac, like those used by the Susquehanna and the Masgawameke."

  "Quite remarkable," the marshal said. "And no doubt you've learned the sign language, which I understand is common among the various tribes."

  Eagerly I made the signs of clouds, the sun, the moon, a voyage of five days, a pretty girl, and a tall, ugly man. I would have made more signs if the marshal had not broken in to say that with some trepidation he would accept me as a member of the Argall party.

  "But mind you," he warned, "Captain Argall is a disciplinarian. He'll brook no female vapors. I repeat, this is a most dangerous undertaking. And you must think of it as such, not as a girlish prank."

  "Oh, the good Lord forbid it, it is no prank, Your Honor. It is a most serious undertaking."

  "De La Warr told me when we last talked in London that you were a heedless sort. I am inclined to believe him right. Therefore a word of caution before you set off. A lively sense of fear has saved many lives. And it could well save yours, Miss Serena."

  Fear? Fear, as always, was far from my thoughts, but I frowned, nodded, and said, "I'll remember your words. I'll be fearful, Marshal Dale."

  Striding to the gunport, he watched the men idling on the deck of Argall's ship. After a moment he shouted down, "Stir your stumps, rascal outcasts, or I'll see that the captain is promptly among you with a cat-o'-nine-tails."

  He turned his angry gaze upon me, half-smiled as he saw my beaming face, then suddenly shook his head. "It won't do," he said. "An unfortunate idea. I would be dismantled limb from limb if you were killed. It's a man's job. It requires a firm hand and a cold eye. We deal with savages, not with the civilized. Indians understand only the sword. They cower in their dens now that I have used it upon them."