A Lion to Guard Us (5 page)

“No,” said Amanda.

“I rode a horse once,” said Anne. “Did you ever?”

Amanda shook her head.

“Where did you live before you came on the ship?” asked Anne.

“In London,” Amanda told her. “I lived in a great house.”

“You must have been a servant,” said Anne.

“I was,” said Amanda, “but I won't be a servant in the New World.”

Dr. Crider went by.

“Is he your father?” asked Anne.

“No,” said Amanda.

“Your grandfather?”

“He is our friend.”

Anne watched Dr. Crider as he went below. “He's strange, isn't he?”

“No, he isn't,” said Amanda.

“Then why does he stand by the rail when the waves come over? Why does he let himself get wet?”

“He likes to be near the sea.”

Anne gave a sniff. “The sea is all around us. Isn't that near enough?”

Toward the end of June they sailed into rough waters. One morning, after a stormy night, Amanda and Jemmy and Meg were having breakfast in the hold. John Rolfe came looking for them.

“Where is the doctor?” he asked. “My wife is ill, and we need him.”

“I'll find him, sir.” Amanda went above. The wind was still blowing. Only a few people were on deck.

She asked some of them if they had seen Dr. Crider. None of them had.

She went below. “He isn't on deck,” she told John Rolfe.

“He isn't in the hold,” said Master Rolfe.

She pointed to the rooms where the ladies and gentlemen lived. “He may be in there.”

“No, he isn't,” said Master Rolfe. “When did you last see him?”

“Last night.”

“Not this morning?”

“No, sir.”

Again she went up on deck. She even went to the galley where the cook was cutting up cabbages.

He was angry when she spoke to him.

“You can't come in here! No, I've
not
seen the doctor. How should I know where he is?”

Others were looking. They asked one another, “When did you last see him?”

A sailor came forward. “I saw him on deck last night. I said to him, ‘Doctor, there's danger. The waves are coming over, and you'd best not stay here.' But I never saw him go.”

John Rolfe said to Amanda, “Go below. We'll keep looking.”

She went into the hold and sat with Jemmy and Meg.

It was a long time before Master Rolfe came down. “We didn't find him.”

“He must be in one of the cabins,” she said. “Did you ask the admiral and the captain?”

“We've been all over the ship,” said Master Rolfe. “It could be . . . Amanda, it could be that he's gone.”

“Where?” she asked.

“Overboard,” he said.

“Oh, no,” she said. “He
couldn't
be. He's on the ship somewhere. I
know
he is. I'll find him.”

But she was afraid.

Master Buck, the minister, talked to Amanda, Jemmy, and Meg.

“Dr. Crider was a good man,” he said. “Now he is in a better world.”

“Yes, sir,” said Amanda.

But she would not believe the doctor was gone. It was like a dream, she thought, and someday she would wake from it. She would wake and find him there . . .

After a week, a sailor came to look at the chests in the hold. He found the one with Dr. Crider's medicines in it. He picked it up and set it on his shoulder.

“Where are you taking it?” asked Amanda.

“To the captain's cabin,” answered the sailor.

Somehow she could not pretend after that. With the chest gone, she knew that Dr. Crider was gone, too.

He was gone, and Mother was gone, and she wanted to go away by herself and cry. But where could she go to be alone? Fear came over her. Mother had died, Dr. Crider had left them. How could she be sure that Father was waiting in the New World?

She saw Jemmy and Meg watching her, almost as if they knew what she was thinking. She tried to pretend that all was well. She sang them a song. She told them a story.

She dug into one of the chests and found some scraps of cloth.

“What are you doing?” asked Jemmy.

“I'm going to make something,” she said.

“What?” he asked.

“A surprise.”

By candlelight, while they were asleep, she made a doll for Meg and a ball for Jemmy. In the morning she gave them their presents.

But Meg would not take the doll. She would not even touch it.

Amanda looked at it. In the daylight, she saw how ugly it was. It had a crooked grin. The pieces of string she had used for hair looked like snakes. It was a devil doll.

The ball was not much better. It had no more shape than a bean bag.

Jemmy took it, then gave it back to her. “Could I have the door knocker?” he asked.

“It's not a plaything,” said Amanda.

“I want it,” he said.

It was in one of the chests. She got it for him.

When they went up on deck, he showed the knocker to Anne and David Hopkins.

“A lion's head!” said Anne. She and her brother wanted to play with it.

“No, it's mine.” Jemmy ran away. The Hopkins children ran after him. Now and then he stopped and knocked on the deck with the knocker. Amanda heard him say, “Knock-knock, here comes Jemmy!”

She took the ball she had made and threw it overboard. She threw the devil doll after it. Almost at once she felt better—as if she had thrown away some of her sadness, some of her fear.

That evening they sat in the hold. Amanda was teaching Meg to sew. Jemmy was rubbing the lion's head with a piece of cloth. “The men put finger marks on it,” he said.

“What men?” asked Amanda.

“Master Waters and Master Carter,” answered Jemmy. “Master Hopkins, too.”

John Rolfe came across the hold.

Amanda asked him, “How is Mistress Rolfe?”

“Better, thank you. Amanda,” he said, “I must speak to you.”

He knelt beside her. He spoke in a low voice, “This lion's head that your brother has—what
is
it?”

“It's a door knocker.”

“Where did you get it?”

“From our father.”

“Then it wasn't Dr. Crider's?”

“No, sir.”

“What is it made of?”

“Father said it was brass.”

“Do you know what people are saying about it? They are saying it is brass on the outside and gold underneath.”

She looked at the lion's head in Jemmy's hands. “How could that be?”

“They say Dr. Crider had his gold melted down and made into a door knocker.”

“Why?”

“So he could take it to the New World in secret,” said John Rolfe.

“But—that's foolish,” she said.

“Speak low,” he said. “Someone might be listening.”

“It's only a brass door knocker,” she replied. “It used to be on our house in London. How could people think it might be gold?”

“Someone might have told them.”

“Who?”

John Rolfe looked at Jemmy.

“Oh,” she said.

“And if people believe the knocker is gold,” said Master Rolfe, “they can make trouble.”

“It's only brass.”

“But if they think it's gold, they might try to take it from you.”

He left her.

She whispered to Jemmy, “Put it away.”

“What?”

“The knocker. Put it away.”

“Why?”

“Do as I say!”

“Crosspatch,” he said. But he put the knocker into his pocket.

In the morning she took it from him. When no one was looking, she hid it in one of their sea chests.

They went up on deck.

“I want the knocker,” he said.

She asked him, “Did you tell Anne and David it was gold?”

He looked down.

“Did you?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“They thought their ball was so good. I said my lion's head was better because it was gold.”

“And now people think it
is
gold. Don't you see? They'll try to take it away from you.”

Robert Waters came up to them. “Could I see the door knocker?” he asked.

“I put it away,” said Amanda.

“You'd better have someone take care of it for you,” he said. “I'll keep it safe if you like.”

“It's only brass,” she said.

He looked at Jemmy, then at her. She was not sure he believed her.

The talk went on for days. Was the lion's head gold? Was it only brass? Had it been Dr. Crider's? Where had it really come from?

Then it was forgotten. There was something that mattered more. There was the storm.

It began with a few low clouds. The air was heavy and hot. It seemed to press down until everyone felt restless. Some grew angry without knowing why.

A young gentleman came out of his room and threw his dish across the hold. “The food on this ship isn't fit for pigs!” he shouted.

Mistress Hopkins talked in a loud voice, “They said we would be in Virginia in five weeks. Now it's the end of July. Seven weeks we've been at sea. How much longer will it be, I'd like to know?”

Amanda was on deck with Jemmy and Meg when the wind sprang up. It was a fierce, hot wind that burned their faces and tore at their clothes.

There was a long, blue flash of lightning, and thunder shook the ship.

They ran for the hold. Jemmy went ahead. Amanda helped Meg down the ladder.

It was dark as night in the hold. Someone lighted candles.

Amanda found a box for them to sit on, but Jemmy would not sit down.

“I'm not going to stay here,” he said. “There's no air to breathe.”

Robert Waters came by and gave him a pat on the head. “Don't you fret,” he said. “It's just another storm. It will soon blow over.”

But it was more than just another storm.

A sailor came down to look for leaks. “In all my days at sea,” he said, “I've never seen such as this.”

The waves were higher than the ship, he told them. The deck was deep in water. The wind was tearing the sails to bits.

The ship rolled from side to side, and the people were thrown back and forth. Boxes and chests were thrown back and forth with them.

The hold had been closed against the storm.

“Thank heaven we're safe here,” said Master Hopkins.

“You call this safe?” cried Mistress Hopkins as she dodged a sliding chest.

“At least, we're dry,” said Master Hopkins.

“We won't be dry for long,” she said.

The hold had begun to leak.

“To the pumps!” called John Rolfe. “All hands to help pump out the water!”

“I'll help,” said Amanda.

“Not you,” said John Rolfe, and she went back to Jemmy and Meg.

For two days the ship was tossed and shaken in the storm. Amanda and Jemmy and Meg clung together.

They heard Master Hopkins's voice. “The ship is sinking, the ship is sinking!”

“
Are
we sinking?” asked Jemmy.

“No,” said Amanda.

“How do you know?” asked Jemmy.

“Listen to me,” she said. “I—I'll tell you a story!”

“What?”

“I said I'll tell you a
story!
”

“We couldn't hear it.”

“I'll
make
you hear.”

Above the roar of the wind and rain, Amanda shouted, “There were two sisters and their brother. They were on a ship—and there was a storm. Can you hear?”

“Yes,” he said.

“It was a great storm. It went on and on. And then—”

“What?” asked Jemmy.

“It was over, and there was—there was land.”

“Where?” asked Jemmy.

“In the middle of the sea. They got off the ship—and they were safe on land.”