Serpent Never Sleeps

  I was astounded at this outburst. I hoped that Pocahontas would send him packing. What effrontery! What arrogance! For the first time I saw clearly the gulf that separated us from the Indians. How could there ever be peace between us while white men looked upon the red men as barbarians, a group to exploit and to murder, if necessary?

  Rolfe's private torment became a public scendal. Divided among themselves about God and His Word, the settlers agreed upon one thing. The marriage of John Rolfe to an Indian would be a mortal sin.

  Emma Swinton was certain that Rolfe consorted with the devil. In fact, she had seen the two of them riding in the same canoe.

  "He sits in the stern, wrapped in a fur-trimmed cloak with a large black hood, whether the day is cold or hot," she said. "In his hand there's always a Bible, from which he reads in mocking tones, twisting the words to suit his evil schemes." Her gray face turned reddish. "I have seen Satan, I swear, and heard his monstrous voice. Burn me if I lie."

  The proposed marriage seemed sinful to Marshal Dale, who in his zeal had set down a list of blue laws to match his blood laws. Church attendance twice each day he had made compulsory. If a man or woman failed in this, he or she gave up a week's food allowance. A second offense brought a serious flogging. Those who persisted were hanged, shot, or burned at the stake. Profanity was punished by a lash or a hot bodkin run through the tongue.

  Marshal Dale, noted as a leader in Christian matters, abhorred the scandal. He put his sharp mind to the problem and came up with an idea. Since Pocahontas lacked a soul, he would find her one. To this end, he appointed Master Whitaker, a young man of twenty-six steeped in the Bible.

  Pocahontas was whisked away to Henrico.

  The skimpy fringed dress that failed to cover half her beauty was discarded. She was stuffed into a bone corset, covered from waist to ankle in a farthingale, a stiff framework draped with crinoline, and sent away to the Reverend Whitaker's hundred-acre parsonage to become a Christian.

  I didn't see her while I was making the curtain for Tom's cabin. No word came to Jamestown about her except that she was an apt pupil and was fast learning Christian ways.

  I had forgotten to measure the cabin window, so Humility and I visited the glassmaker to find out the size Tom had bought. It was two feet high and two feet wide. Then we went to the ship's storeroom for fabric. I couldn't find the material I wanted—brown bombazine with yellow flowers spread around in a cheerful pattern. There was nothing remotely like this. Indeed, all they could offer was a length of plain white netting.

  "You might try Henrico," the clerk said. "There's a new shop on River Lane. It sells everything in the way of cloth. Tell them James Armbruster sent you."

  As we were leaving, Emma Swinton spoke up. It was not a chance meeting. I had seen her come up the gangplank and follow me in. She had been hiding somewhere in the storeroom.

  "I have just the thing for a curtain," she said, speaking in her soft voice, which was like the hissing of a gentle snake. "I brought it all the way from London." From under her cloak she removed a parcel of cloth and spread it out on the counter. The light in the storeroom was poor but the cloth glittered like the purest gold.

  "The cabin's dark," I said. "Your cloth is just the thing to liven it up. How much do you ask?"

  "Nothing, 'tis a wedding gift. But now and then you must let me keep the girl," she said, pinching Humility's ear. "There are things I wish to teach her."

  "Wedding gift? I am not marrying Tom Barlow. Whenever did you unearth that idea?"

  "Before the hurricane, long ago, the night you wandered out on deck, and Tom Barlow talked to you about St. Elmo's fire."

  "I didn't know Tom then. I had never spoken to him before. I madly loved Anthony Foxcroft."

  Her eyes turned inward. Their mottled whites were all that I could see. "The future casts a backward glance," she said. "The past casts a forward glance. Fiery Aldebaran leads the unshorn sheep to pasture."

  I made nothing of her words, no more than I usually did. But on closer look I saw that woven into the silk were tiny stars. It was the stars that lent the cloth a golden glister.

  "You're most welcome to it. And I'll be most happy to help. I am a seamstress by trade. For years I served Lady Pamela—"

  Her breath caught in her throat.

  The name Pamela stirred memories. I recalled that a year before I left Foxcroft, a Lady Pamela Moss had fallen from a window in Moss Castle. Her seamstress was accused of pushing Lady Pamela to her death. It was a celebrated trial. King James himself had directed it, standing by the rack and asking questions. Certain that she was a witch, the king had the seamstress stretched on the rack. But the trial, for all the stretching, ended in acquittal.

  Had Emma Swinton been Lady Pamela's seamstress? It could account for her knobby wrists, the hissing sound she made when talking, her bulging eyes streaked like agates.

  "Do you wish me to help?" she asked in a plaintive voice.

  "No," I said, suddenly blindingly aware that the making of the curtain was an act of love. "Thank you, but I wish to sew it myself. And thank you for the cloth. It will be beautiful at the window. I hope he will like it. He has simple tastes and this isn't simple. It's elegant."

  "It should be. It came from a cardinal's robe taken from the vestry."

  I made the curtain much longer and wider than the window. I cut and sewed it myself, though Emma offered suggestions. I couldn't refuse her when she asked to accompany Humility and me to Henrico.

  On the way we stopped at the parsonage. The Reverend Whitaker appeared at the courtyard gate. He was sorry that Rebecca could not be seen.

  "Rebecca?" I said. "What an outlandish name for an Indian girl."

  "She's deep in her studies," he said. "A visit with you, I fear, would prove an unwanted distraction."

  "But, Master Whitaker, we're friends, old friends."

  "Yes, that's precisely why your presence here will remind her of those pagan days."

  Yet as he shuffled his feet, he seemed to waver. Then his gaze fell upon the forbidding figure of Emma Swinton. He frowned and in one motion bowed himself through the gate, saying, "I'll inform Rebecca that you came."

  We had not gone far along the path that led to the river when I heard footsteps. Through the trees, her hair streaming, Pocahontas burst upon us.

  "You're going to Tom Barlow's. I'll go with you," she said, and running ahead, urged us on. "Hurry. Reverend Whitaker will come looking."

  I stopped where I was. She had a small bundle in her arms. "You're not fleeing?" I said, alarmed. "If you are, they'll surely find you and blame us."

  "No. Reverend Whitaker is a kind man, but the name Rebecca I do not like and I am tired of the books I do not understand and all the candles that smoke, and kind Reverend Whitaker gliding around full of smiles. I would like to smell the sea wind again and take off these clothes and swim in the river and shout Indian words to the great Manitou."

  "Once a wild Indian, always a wild Indian," Emma Swinton said, but took her by the hand, and the two began to run, Humility crying for them to wait.

  TWENTY-SIX

  We hurried out of sight. Time would pass, perhaps hours, before the Reverend Whitaker would discover that Pocahontas had gone. Even then, it would take him a while to find her.

  When we got to the far side of the river, she slipped out of her taffeta dress, kicked off her ribboned shoes and stood naked. With a whoop she slid into the river, disappeared, and came up spouting water. She glowed in the sun. She looked like a forest animal and sounded like one.

  Humility wanted to follow her. I put an end to this and kept watch on the opposite shore. No one was in sight, but up the river I made out a dim shape, what I took to be a fleet of Indian canoes. I couldn't tell whether they were moving in our direction.

  By the time Pocahontas came out of the water, opened the bundle she had brought, and put on a leather shirt, the canoes were closer but still at some distance.

  "Mattaponi," she said.


  "How do you know?" I asked her.

  "They're painted black and have white faces and their canoes are black."

  "Who are they?"

  "They live on a stream to the north. The Mattaponi were my father's good friends. They got mad at him and have become our enemies. They are on a raid and not to be trusted. We will hide our canoe. We'll cover our tracks with dirt until we're in the forest."

  It was midafternoon and very hot. Tom was in the field hoeing plants. He dropped the hoe and trotted down the path to meet us. The long summer had bronzed his skin. He looked like an Indian.

  "Did you bring food?" were his first words. "The cupboard's bare. It's been bare for two days now. I planned a trip to town this afternoon."

  "The woods are overrunning with deer and turkey," Emma said. "Why do you not shoot yourself something to eat?"

  "Because I'm low on powder and lead. I'd rather go hungry than run out of shot."

  "Find me some willows," Pocahontas said, "and I'll show you how to make a rabbit trap."

  Pocahontas was in a happy mood. I think it was because she had escaped from the Reverend Whitaker's parsonage. I had never seen her so happy, so happy or so beautiful. Her dark eyes glowed. Her long black hair, still wet from the river, shone in the sun.

  Once inside, she ran to the big copper pan that Tom had hung on the wall and parted her hair in three heavy braids. She twisted them together and piled them around her head in a rough coronet. Then she surveyed herself, turning her head from side to side. She was beautiful. What's more, she knew she was beautiful and reveled in it.

  Humility went out and came back with willow branches, which Pocahontas trimmed and tied together with a thong from her skirt.

  Tom thanked her, but he wasn't much interested in the trap. He kept glancing at me when he thought I wasn't looking. And he kept this up while Emma opened her bundle and passed around corncakes and speckled turkey eggs and muscadine grapes. He still didn't know about the curtain.

  I waited until the last crumb was eaten and Humility had made a drink of muscadine juice and cold spring water, a drink she made at Jamestown and loved. Only then did I take out the curtain. Tom had put two pegs on either side of the window and a peeled branch between.

  "A perfect fit," Tom said.

  He did a little dance. He lit two candles because the curtain had darkened the room. Then we danced and sang. Humility had the only good voice among us, clear and true and touching.

  Emma was the only one who didn't sing. She went to the window, opened the curtain, and looked out. At what, I do not know—perhaps the green fields, the skies that were turning gray, the brooding forest where the last of the sun clung to the topmost branches.

  It was almost dark when the face appeared at the window. At first I thought that the Reverend Whitaker had come for Pocahontas. She saw the face, quickly drew the curtain, then ran to the door. It was closed but not locked. She lifted the wooden bar, slid it into place, and blew out the two candles.

  "Mattaponi," Pocahontas whispered to Tom.

  Above the room was a loft. I lifted Humility and put her into it and told her to be quiet. Tom parted the curtain a crack. Through the trees a heavy moon was rising. A wind had come up. A light knock sounded at the door, then three knocks, each louder than the one before.

  "Who are you?" Tom asked.

  "Seanoc speaks for werowance of the Mattaponi."

  "What do you want?"

  "Werowance comes for the daughter of evil Powhatan."

  "She is not here," Tom replied. "Go to the parsonage across the river and see Reverend Whitaker."

  I heard feet running. The sounds seemed to come from all sides of the cabin. Dozens of Indians must have been there in the moonlight. The man who spoke for the werowance was silent.

  "Do you understand my talk?" Tom said.

  "Understand good," the man said.

  "Then what are you waiting for?"

  "For Pocahontas," the man said. "We follow Pocahontas from place across river, up here. Understand?"

  Tom took down his musket from the mantelpiece. He poured powder from his powder horn into the barrel, set a wad of cloth on top, packed the powder down hard, and sprinkled some in the powder pan.

  "I understand," he said.

  There was a long silence. Then a different Indian, one with a raspy voice, spoke haughtily, his words so loud and fast that Tom didn't understand them. Pocahontas whispered that it was the werowance speaking, that he had heard about the kidnapping and the ransom the white man, Dale, had demanded.

  "He thinks that what the white man can do, the Mattaponi can do," she said.

  "What you can do is to be wise," Tom called to the werowance. "Leave here before Pocahontas comes. She comes soon with many guards. They will hack you down with sharp swords and throw your bodies in the river for the big fish and the small fish to eat."

  "Ho," the werowance called back, "we see what big fish and small fish eat."

  There was another silence, broken by nighthawk cries, cries the nighthawks did not make. I parted the curtain and peered out.

  "The werowance has left the door," I said. "At the edge of the clearing, where the forest begins, black figures are dancing around a fire."

  Tom came to the window. "The werowance," he said, "is among them in his feathered robe and eagle feathers, trying hard to decide if it's wise to set fire to the cabin. If he does, Pocahontas might be killed. He doesn't care about us."

  Humility had stopped crying, but when she heard Tom's frightening words she let out a sob. I quieted her by lifting her down from the loft. She got in the bed, disappeared in the covers, and lay quiet.

  The werowance returned. "Daughter of King Powhatan," he said in his raspy voice, "do you come out like a princess, head high, or am I to set fire to the cabin and burn you out like a little rat?"

  She was stung by his words. Color showed in her cheeks. "You know my father," she said. "You know he is a vengeful man. You need no proof of that. He slew three of your brothers by removing their skins from head to toe with the sharpened edge of clam shells. If you harm me, if you harm my friends, he will hunt you down wherever you may hide and do the same to you."

  "Your father grows old, feeble, a little crazy," the werowance said. "I fear him not."

  Again I looked through the part in the curtain. Behind the werowance stood a row of warriors carrying fagots that gave off fire and smoke.

  The wind drove wisps of the smoke under the door. Emma, who was sitting on the bed, trying to calm Humility, began to cough. She got up and came over to us.

  "What do you propose to do?" she said to Pocahontas, speaking peremptorily, as if there were many choices. "We can't just stand around and breathe pine smoke and wait to be burned up, can we?"

  Pocahontas ignored her and said to the werowance, "You followed me from the place across the river. I was taken there by white warriors with iron muskets that shoot fire, not with wood clubs. Those white warriors are looking for me now. They'll see your canoes on the shore. They'll come here. And that will be the end of you."

  "I just heard this," the werowance said. "The man told me guards are here soon. The moon is overhead. Guards have not come. Maybe they are afraid to come."

  No one spoke. In the silence I heard footsteps scurrying across the roof. Then there was a loud noise in the chimney. Suddenly a fagot struck the hearthstone and sparks flew into the room.

  Emma Swinton stamped them out. Tom held a matchlock in the crook of his arm; his other gun hung above the mantel. Emma took it down.

  "Is it ready to shoot?" she asked him.

  "Except for the priming."

  "It's time to prime it," she said.

  Tom tested the flint, sprinkled powder in the priming pan, and leaned the musket against the door. Emma picked it up and swung it around, aiming at the door, at the window, finally at him. He took it away from her and set it against the wall.

  Another fagot fell down the chimney. The first one was still smolde
ring, giving off puffs of black smoke. The second one showered sparks and began to smolder. A third fagot came clattering to the hearth.

  None of the smoke went up the chimney. After they tossed a fagot, they covered the chimney top. The werowance had no intention of setting the cabin on fire, running the risk of losing Pocahontas. Instead, he was bent upon smoking her out.

  The Indians danced around outside. There were more sounds on the roof and three more fagots came down the chimney.

  Clearing his throat, the werowance said, "Good news. Guards of big place beyond the river have torches. They will march to the river. They will get in their canoes. As the sun rises they will come. Too late. I will be gone away. Gone with daughter of Powhatan, Powhatan who is so ugly I wonder he had such a beautiful girl. Crazy, is this ugly Powhatan."

  The werowance made a sniffing noise. "I smell some smoke," he said. "A good smell. Like pine forest on a summer day. You smell it, too, in there?"

  No one answered. The smoke was so heavy in the room we barely could see each other. Humility, who had been lying rigid under a blanket, put her head out, but as another fagot fell and her eyes began to smart, she covered herself again.

  I sat down on the bed beside her. Surely the guards were on their way from the parsonage. They would not wander around all night looking for Pocahontas, as the werowance said. The Reverend Whitaker would tell them that she was probably with me at Tom Barlow's.

  The air became hard to breathe. Everyone was coughing. A bucket of water sat under the table. Emma groped her way through the smoke, picked it up, and threw water on the fagot, but it only sizzled and made more smoke.

  "You look very calm," she said to me. "In no time at all I'll be dead while you calmly sit."

  She stared at the serpent ring. "You are calm because of that," she said, biting her words. "Calm because it will save you." She reached down and grasped my hand. She tried to wrench the ring from my finger. Failing, she dealt me a slap on the cheek.

  "Coward!" she shouted.