Roanoke (The Keepers of the Ring) (23 page)

Edward Stafford realized later that he would remember the horror of that night until his dying day.
The fires of the Indian town had burned bright through the forest, lighting the way like signal beacons. Like savages, Stafford’s men approached with stealth and silence. From their hiding places in the trees outside the village, Stafford and the others could see no movement near the grass huts, only a small circle of savages huddled around a predawn fire.

As leader of the war party and chief avenger for George Howe, Edward Stafford raised his musket to his shoulder, aimed, and fired at one of the men.
His ears roared with the deafening explosion of the gun, and families staggered from the huts as the Indians around the fire fled in bewilderment. The English line moved forward into the circle of the camp, firing at will as women and children ran screaming into the dark woods.

Stafford moved confidently into the camp as the sounds of gunfire drowned out screams of panic.
The savage he had shot lay by the fire where a red pool bloomed from his head. A woman with a child on her back sat by the fire with her hands folded as if begging for mercy. From a distance, someone screamed, “Stafford! Stafford!” and Stafford automatically turned to help the man in trouble.

But a scene of atavistic horror erupted before his eyes.
The man who knelt now before him was not English. He wore the familiar painted designs of the Croatoan.

Stafford winced as a whisper of horror ran through him.
Surely God would not allow such an egregious error! He whirled around as the woman with the babe on her back spoke English words, “Stafford, Manteo, Manteo, our friend.” The dead man on the ground wore a necklace of iron beads, a recent gift from the English.

“
Stop firing!” Stafford shouted, thrusting his hand into the smoke-filled air. Manteo caught his eye and echoed the cry. “Stop firing! These people are Croatoan!”

The jubilant cries of the English faded, but the sobbing of the women did not end so quickly.
Before the sun rose, Edward Stafford realized that the Roanoacs they had come to punish had fled days before; the Croatoan in this camp had come to gather the Roanoac’s abandoned stores. One Indian lay dead, and one woman, the wife of one of the werowances of the Croatoan tribe, was badly injured.

As he surveyed the confusion of carnage, Stafford felt the bloodlust drain from his heart.
As English and Indians alike looked to him for direction, he gestured abruptly to Manteo, the unenviable man who had inadvertently led the English to attack his own people. But Manteo’s face was locked, void of expression. He was undoubtedly more horrified than Stafford.

“
Gather these people, with whatever food you can find,” Stafford commanded, his voice hoarse as he shouldered his musket. “Bring them to the boat; we’ll take them with us to the fort.”

Simon Fernandes, who had come along to pilot the shallop, read the anguish on Stafford
’s face. “You should be pleased,” he said, his smile gleaming from beneath his clipped moustache. “The enemy have fled, have they not?”

Stafford knew he would never be able to find joy in this victory.
He had fired upon and killed innocent people; his blunder had been worse than Ralph Lane’s.

But he could not show his remorse.
He forced a smile worthy of a triumphant victor. “As of this day,” he bowed to his men, “we live on Roanoke Island.” Without looking back, Edward Stafford left the camp.

On August thirteenth, in front of over one hundred
colonists and thirty of the Croatoan tribe, the reverend Thomas Colman baptized Manteo into the Christian faith while John White declared him Lord of Roanoke and Dasemunkepeuc. “This I do in reward of his faithful service, and according to the wishes of our lord Sir Walter Raleigh,” White announced to the assembly.

Watching from the crowd, Jocelyn thought she understood the reason for Manteo
’s honor. Raleigh had instructed her uncle to so honor Manteo in the hope that Manteo would remain behind on the island when the colony left for Chesapeake. With Manteo in place as lord and overseer, the island of Roanoke and the coast of Virginia would then be held in Raleigh’s name until Sir Walter was ready to promote another Virginia expedition.

But Manteo
’s unprecedented honor could have waited until the colony was ready to depart for the Chesapeake. It had been advanced because Manteo had worn a haunted look ever since the morning when English war party had returned with three score Indians and no clear answers to the other colonists’ questions. Afraid to face either his English friends or his Croatoan brothers, Manteo had appeared unstable, and Jocelyn knew her uncle and the assistants worried about his influence on the other savages. In order to insure that Manteo would not betray the English as did Wingina, Manteo was officially forgiven, baptized, and declared lord of the land.

Jocelyn wondered privately if the Croatoans bore Manteo any ill feeling.
From Towaye she had learned that Manteo’s mother had been chief of the Croatoans at the time he had been captured by the English. Apparently the Croatoan had a time-honored practice of placing members of the chief’s family in other villages to control relationships, so before the massacre at Dasemunkepeuc Manteo’s “adoption” by the English had seemed to work to the Croatoan’s advantage.

Only God and Manteo now knew what his people thought of him, but Manteo
’s formalized position meant that the colonists’ days on Roanoke were numbered. He would naturally want to set up a dynasty of his own on the island, so the colonists would have no choice but to move on to Chesapeake in the Spring.

And though the colonists had returned to their homes after the raid on Dasemunkepeuc, Jocelyn had yet to spend time with Thomas alone for Eleanor demanded her constant presence.
As her baby’s birth drew near, Eleanor grew more and more worried about attacks by the savages, and Jocelyn and Agnes spent most of their time trying to assure Eleanor that the Roanoacs would not dare to attack.

Audrey, Jocelyn came to realize, could not be counted on to help Eleanor.
Whenever possible, the girl slipped away to loiter with William Clement, whose intentions remained hazy but whose interest in the girl apparently had not waned.

Jocelyn began to look forward to the arrival of this first Virginian baby.
After the child had come, she would be able to return to life with her husband in her own home, a life she had barely begun. And once she was sure of her own husband, she would marry Audrey to William, and life would be all it could be in the savage wilderness of Virginia.

Twenty

T
he eighteenth of August dawned hot and sticky, and water poured from Eleanor’s loins at the first morning light. Audrey, foolish and immature, fell to pieces when she realized Eleanor would soon have the baby, and Jocelyn sent the girl away. “I believe I don’t know what good I’ll be to you, coz,” she whispered as Eleanor settled back upon her freshly stuffed mattress to await the travail of birth. “I’faith, I don’t know anything about babies—”

“
You don’t—oh, heaven help me,” Eleanor sputtered, gripping Jocelyn’s hand as a painful spasm distorted her face. She panted for a moment until the pain subsided, then took one look at Jocelyn’s face and laughed. “Did no woman ever tell you anything about babies?”

Jocelyn looked down at her hands and blushed.
“No. There was no woman to tell me.”

Eleanor paused.
“Your father—”

Jocelyn shook her head rapidly.
“No. He would never speak of such things. He gave me books to read, though—”

“
Books.” Eleanor let her head fall onto the mattress. “What books?”

“
Well,” Jocelyn began hesitantly. “I have read Ovid.
Amores
.”

“
What?” Eleanor lifted her head and crossed her eyes. “My dear coz, whatever was your father thinking? What can a girl learn from reading a dead Greek?”

“
A dead Roman,” Jocelyn answered. “My father wished me to know the thoughts of the world. He said that in order to appreciate light, one needed to recognize darkness.”

“
Your father was always—impractical,” Eleanor grunted, squeezing Jocelyn’s hand as another pain gripped her. She waited until the spasm had passed, then raised herself up onto her elbows. “My father says the savage women merely squat over a hole when giving birth.” She grinned at Jocelyn. “Would you dig me a hole, cousin?”

“
Never!” Jocelyn was horrified at her cousin’s playful attitude. Had pain driven Eleanor from her senses?

As the day wore on, Eleanor grunted and groaned and screamed.
By noon, Elizabeth Viccars had been sent for; by dusk, Eleanor’s child had arrived. Perfectly healthy and robust, the first English child born in Her Majesty’s Virginia was a dark-haired, blue-eyed girl.

Jocelyn carried the swaddled child to her uncle.
John White gingerly took his new granddaughter into his arms as a circle of English and Indian women watched with something akin to reverence in their eyes. “Eleanor has said she is to be christened Virginia Elizabeth Dare,” he said, his eyes misting as he beheld the miracle of life in his wide hands. “Her Majesty will be pleased.”

As Eleanor privately nursed her newborn the next day, the remaining colonists gathered in the center of the fort for a community meeting.
All supplies had been unloaded from the flyboat and the
Lion
, and Simon Fernandes was readying the fleet for its departure for England. The ballast had been removed from the lower decks, the holds rummaged, the ships newly caulked. The seamen had spent the last few days loading fresh water and a cargo of precious wood, one commodity that was plentiful in America and scarce in England. Most of the settlers had been busy writing letters and preparing souvenir tokens for friends and family who waited in England.

But John White knew the mood of the colonists at this meeting would be anything but tranquil.
John Sampson had begun a petition to demand that at least two of the assistants should return to England. “The assistants in England cannot be trusted to know what we really need,” Sampson explained, standing in the clearing as the other colonists listened. “And while our sea captain would dispute my words, mark me: in truth, not one of us truly trusts Simon Fernandes to give a true and fair report of our needs.”

John White nodded.
“You have a point, John,” he said, rubbing his beard. “And I thought Christopher Cooper had agreed to go. But now that Cooper has changed his opinion . . .”

The governor paused, and the colonists respectfully fell silent to give him time to think.
White knew they were right to be concerned. Food supplies were short, and would grow shorter in the months ahead. Thanks to Fernandes, they had arrived too late to put in a decent crop, and winter loomed ahead. Even the friendly Croatoans had stated flatly that they would not feed the English at Roanoke as they had fed the Lane colony.

White took a deep breath and sighed.
He knew the colonists wanted him to return to England. Of all the men, he could most easily gain the ear of Raleigh, mayhap even the Queen. These men and women needed him to be their voice in England, but how could he leave his daughter and days-old granddaughter?

“
You, Governor, know what we face here,” Edward Powell spoke up. “The assistants in England have no idea.”

“
But ‘twould appear I have deserted you,” White argued, beating the air with his fist. “And I, who have convinced you to stake your lives and fortunes upon this journey, cannot desert the expedition. I cannot go.”

“
You can make Sir Walter Raleigh understand our precarious position,” Arnold Archard argued. “The others are concerned with their own affairs.”

“
Raleigh understands already; he is a man of action.”

“
I hate to say it, sir, but Eleanor and I would feel more secure if you were filling a ship to meet our needs,” Ananias said, his eyes lifting to meet those of his father-in-law. The young father’s mouth curved in a proud smile. “And for the sake of your granddaughter, will you not consider going?”

White felt his resolve slipping.
“What about my papers?” he stammered. “My books. All my earthly belongings are here, on Roanoke—”

“
We’ll guard your belongings and your trunks.” Thomas Colman stepped forward and nodded resolutely. “You have my word as a man of God that no harm shall come to anything that belongs to John White.”

John felt his heart stir with respect for the man who stood before him.
The somber minister had proved to be a man of loyalty and courage. If any man could be trusted to help oversee the colony in White’s absence, surely Thomas Colman could.

“
All right,” John said, waving his hands in surrender. “I am not certain, but I will consider your request. But your request must be in writing, lest any in England say I have deserted you. The document must make it fully clear that I leave to meet your needs, and that I leave only because of your great insistence that I go.”