Roanoke (The Keepers of the Ring) (25 page)

Could Raleigh
’s benevolent theories and ideals be put into practice?

The merciless sun of early September smote the green fields where the colonists had planted corn and beans, and Jocelyn felt her stomach churn as she moved slowly among the tall plants. She had not breakfasted, for Thomas had proclaimed a day of fasting and prayer for John White
’s safe return to England, and she felt weak and dizzy in the blinding sunlight.

Speaking for the righteous good of the colony, Thomas had proclaimed many things since John White
’s departure. In an ever-lengthening series of pronouncements from his pulpit, he declared that women ought to always have their heads covered out of doors, since bonnets were necessary to shield a lady’s fair skin from the harsh Virginia sun. “Furthermore,” he admitted, “the sight of free-flying hair distracts men from their labors.” Thomas later declared that Sunday morning sermon attendance would be compulsory, so that all colonists would have a weekly reminder that God’s eye hovered over the colony and sin would not be tolerated. Recreation must be reserved for the Sabbath, he went on, swimming on the beach was strictly prohibited, and dancing should not be practiced in the colony lest the Indians see it and think the colonists bewitched.

“Hurry, Miss Jocelyn, the sun will be wantin
’ to fry us soon.” Audrey’s sharp voice brought Jocelyn back from her musings, and she shifted the nearly empty basket on her hip and moved toward shade in the planted field.

The other women moved easily among the small planted hills, pulling ears of corn from the tall stalks as they gossiped about their men and their duties. Governor White had directed the colonists to plant corn as soon as possible in July, and that meager crop was now ready for harvesting and likely to produce their major store of food for the winter. Jocelyn tried not to think about the reality of possible starvation. She knew the Indians planted three different corn crops, one in May, one in June, and one in July, and even their villages found it difficult to feed themselves through the winter. How then were the English to survive?

The thought of starvation seemed not to have occurred anyone else. Every day she joined the women harvesting the ripening food, but the other women seemed more interested in small talk and gossip than the crop. The governor had told them to assign one of the children to guard the corn from marauding animals, and this they had done, but only until John White left on the flyboat. He had also told them to water the plants daily and to plant beans in the shadow of the corn until the first frost, but lately those directives had been ignored as well. The corn withered in the heat; the straggly bean plants sprouted and died without ever bearing fruit.

White
’s instructions had been overlooked because Ananias Dare insisted that the colonists concentrate on preparing for the northward voyage to establish the City of Raleigh. Since White’s departure, Ananias brandished his strong opinion as fearlessly as the remaining assistants murmured against him privately. But in view of the knowledge that John White would soon return, none dared speak out against the governor’s son-in-law in council meetings. Only one dared speak out against Ananias at all, and Jocelyn blushed whenever she heard reports that her own husband was Ananias’ chief adversary.

She reached for an ear of corn on a fresh green stalk, and jerked her hand back when something stung her. A caterpillar lay upon the husk of the corn, a horrid orange creature with black spurs protruding from its head and tail.

Instantly, Jocelyn’s arm tingled, then slowly grew numb. She cried out in dismay, then childishly bit the reddening spot on her hand. She heard Audrey’s worried questions through a daze of pain, then felt the earth shift beneath her feet as she fell into blackness.

She awoke on her own bed and felt the cool dampness of cloths on her hand and head. Audrey stood between a crack of the bed curtains at the foot of the bed, her eyes wide with fear. Jocelyn licked her parched lips before speaking. “What happened?” she asked, trying to lift her head.

“An insect,” Audrey began, glancing fearfully at someone else in the room. “It must have been poisonous, Miss Jocelyn.”

“You are quite all right, then.” Thomas
’ deep voice startled her, and his broad hand parted the curtains at the side of her bed. He stood there, proper and unruffled in his dark leggings and doublet, but in his hand lay another wet cloth for her hand. He glanced at Audrey. “You may go back to the fields, Audrey. I’ll stay with Mistress Colman until she’s well enough to join you.”

Jocelyn closed her eyes as Audrey left, and when she opened them, Thomas leaned toward her, a polite smile on his face. “I didn
’t know you were unused to fasting, my dear. If missing one meal makes you faint, how will you ever manage to fast for a week?”

“It wasn
’t the fast,” she said, pressing her hands to the mattress beneath her to sit up. “‘Twas a caterpillar. A horridly fearsome thing, all black and green and orange—”

“Such a little thing should not cause such a great reaction. Is anything else amiss?”

She felt her face go crimson. She had not been entirely surprised to find herself in bed, for she had felt ill for several days. But she knew the colony could not afford to spare a single pair of hands for nursing, and she had not even discussed her condition with Eleanor or Audrey. But she awoke every morning with queasiness in her stomach, and her monthly flow of blood had not come for weeks. She waited every day for her cycle to begin, remembering with shame that years ago she had thought herself dying when she first began to bleed. But Eleanor had laughed at her fears and told her that ‘twas the curse of women to bleed every month, and as long as she did, all was well. But now that it had stopped . . .

“I am sick.” The words slipped from her traitorous tongue, and Thomas
’ dark eyes narrowed in concentration.

“You are ill? Why didn
’t you say something sooner?”

Jocelyn shook her head. He had loved a woman and lost her; what right had she to make him go through the experience again? Better that she live as though nothing were wrong for as long as possible, then she could leave the village to die in peace and privacy as her father had.

“Tell me, Jocelyn! What is wrong?” Thomas’ tone was urgent, and his hand closed around her upper arm so tightly that she wanted to cry out.

“
‘Tis nothing of importance, I’m sure, and I didn’t want to bother you. But I am sick in the morning and evening, and I no longer bleed like other women—”

With a swift intake of breath, he released her arm and stepped back, clearly stunned. His eyes widened. “Impossible!” he murmured, a crazily twisted smile upon his face.

“I’m sorry, Thomas,” she said, alarmed at his expression. She
must
be dying; why else would he react so strangely? How had he known she would bring him so much pain? He had resisted her from the beginning, but she had insisted upon staying with him. Why? To wound him yet again?

“Let me go live with Eleanor,” she said, lowering her eyes from his distorted face. “She is my family. You won
’t have to nurse me, I do not want to be a burden to you as I grow ill—”

“Hush, girl!” He pressed his hand to his forehead, then raked his fingers through his hair. His eyes, when he looked at her again, glowed with an inner fire. “Is it possible that you do not know?

“Know what?” she asked, scarcely daring to breathe.

He sank onto the mattress and stared at his tented hands. “Did no woman explain these things to you?”

“What things?” Suddenly she felt very childish, and he turned to her, his eyes gentling. Tenderly, he lay his hand upon her stomach. “When a man and a woman are married, when they share private moments as we did—”

She blushed and looked away. His palm seemed to burn her flesh through her clothing.

He paused, then lowered his voice as he removed his hand. “I’m sorry. I did not mean for this to happen, Jocelyn. I never wanted to—but I am flesh, and you were mine, and we were alone, and in those first days I thought perhaps things would be different here—”

“What we did—was wrong?” she whispered, not daring to look up.

“No.” He lowered his head to look into her eyes. “Our act of love was designed by God for the procreation of children. You are with child, my wife. In seven or eight months, if God is willing, you will bear me a son or a daughter.”

The chill shock left her silent. A child! Like Eleanor, she would swell with a baby within her and on a given day that child would come forth from within her womb and wake the
village with its cries. She wanted to laugh; she wanted to cry. She had a husband, she would have a baby. Why then, did she not feel like a mother or even a proper wife?

She lifted her eyes and saw a mingling of pity and regret on her husband
’s face. “Why are you sorry?” she demanded, strengthened by sudden fury. “You created this—
situation
, and yet you say you regret it. Why, Thomas?”

His face emptied of expression, and he turned away to face the blank wall. She shivered, suddenly cold.

“I have a son already,” he said tonelessly. “I never wanted another. I do not want—
I should not have
other children.”

“But if what we did was not wrong, then
‘twas right. This is God’s doing.”

He nodded soberly and stood, adjusting his doublet with a sharp downward pull. “God is forever punishing me,” he said, stepping toward the door. He paused and glanced at her again. “Tell no one of this until the truth cannot be avoided. But you should not work in the field until you feel strong enough. Break your fast, Mistress Colman, and I will send Audrey to you with some soup. If God has seen fit to do this thing, I will accept his hand of judgment.”

“Judgment?” Jocelyn’s mouth went dry.

“Aye. But you need not fear, my wife.” His mouth tipped in a faint smile. “I have promised to take care of you, and I will.”

After leaving his wife, Thomas Colman purposely broke one of the council’s rules and walked alone in the woods outside the village. Let the savages find and kill him, ‘twould only be another proof of God’s hand of judgment upon his soul.

How could he have allowed passion to escape the bonds of self-control? In a moment of weakness he had allowed his heart and soul to be overcome by the vain notion that the girl loved him. He had dared to dream that this was an island paradise where the conventions of a righteous civilization might easily be left behind, and he had taken his wife into his arms. He might have been totally seduced by her love and the joy of being with her, but God had sent Beth Glane and John Jones to remind him of his place in the colony. And the council, speaking harshly that afternoon, had reminded him that he was to be the embodiment of righteous living, the example to whom they could all turn in times of temptation.

On that afternoon, the chains and dark habits of his past life fell upon him again, and he accepted them all as mete punishment from the hand of God. ‘Twas folly that he could have thought he had left them far beyond the sea. But for a brief time, he had been a free man, and in that time he had fallen in love with the young woman who now carried his child . . . a woman whose presence was intoxicating, a woman he must put out of sight and out of mind lest he fall again.

He slammed his hand on a tree trunk in fury. It should not be! He had already sacrificed one child on the altar of submission, how could he surrender another? And, more practically, how could he tell his fellow colonists, so many of them unmarried men, that they must subjugate their fleshly desires when it would now be obvious that he had not been able to master his own? For a brief, shining moment when he realized that Jocelyn carried his child, joy had risen in his heart like a summer morn. But then he had remembered the others and their wagging tongues, and darkness blotted out his joy like blackest night.

“God in heaven,” he roared, scattering a flock of birds as he lifted a fist into the bright afternoon sun, “why do you torment me so?”

But through the mouths of Beth Glane and John Jones, God had spoken. He had allowed his erring sheep a season of sinful pleasure, and then relentlessly goaded the sheep back into the fold.

Twenty-three

O
ut at sea, Captain Edward Spicer’s flyboat kept pace with Simon Fernandes’ flagship until the ships arrived at Terceira in the Azores. Here Fernandes and his crew were eager to linger, hoping to snare a treasure ship bound for Spain and share its riches, but White convinced Spicer that the more prudent action lay in continuing to England.

With a shipload of injured seamen, Spicer had little choice. Privately, White reminded his friend and captain that the colony
’s survival depended in part upon their reaching England before Fernandes, who would surely spread stories to discourage further colonial investors.

The crew of the flyboat left the
Lion
in a safe harbor and headed east to England, but for twenty days they drifted aimlessly under scarce and variable winds. White was concerned for the injured seamen, for they spat blood and lay pale and lifeless below decks. He became truly alarmed when he discovered that leaks in the water barrels had almost completely depleted their supply of fresh water.

On September twenty-eight, after twenty days of purposeless drifting, a storm arose from the northeast and blew the ship so far off course that Spicer had no idea where they were. Pilots had no way of determining a ship
’s longitude, and by using the astrolabe to measure the elevation of the sun above the horizon at noon, Spicer could only determine that they were more than two weeks away from their position before the storm.

Below deck, conditions worsened. The sailors, already weak from internal injuries suffered by the buffeting of the capstan, began to fall sick and die. Their food supply, even the insect-infested and petrified sea biscuit, had long been gone. Only one barrel did not leak, and into this the boatswain
poured the remains of the blackened water, the dregs of beer, and a few inches of wet sediment from emptied casks of wine. Altogether, less than three gallons of liquid remained, and White fully expected the entire company to perish at sea from dehydration. The stinking liquid, precious nonetheless, was carefully rationed each day as the weak seamen set the sails and contemplated death.

After a blur of days in such dreary speculation, a sailor in the crow
’s nest called out “Land ahoy,” and White stirred from the tattered blanket on which he had been lying. Was it possible that he should be saved? He had thought the trials of this trip God’s just punishment for deserting the colony, but mayhap salvation loomed ahead.

The uninjured seamen used their remaining strength to survey the harbor into which they sailed. An English pinnace lay at anchor there, and, after an hour, her shallop approached. After answering the visitors
’ greeting, the men of the flyboat learned that they were in the port of Smerwick, on the west coast of Ireland.

The men of the pinnace provided Spicer
’s crew with desperately-needed fresh water, wine, and meat, but three men died within a day of reaching Ireland, and three more were taken off the ship, too sick to continue.

With regret, White knocked on Spicer
’s door.

“Come in.”

White pushed the cabin door open, and found Edward Spicer writing in his log. “Excuse me, Captain, but another ship, the
Monkey
, leaves on the morrow for England. I plan to book passage on her.”

Spicer looked up, his face clear and untroubled. “Do not bother yourself with me, John. I know you are eager to return to England.”

“I am sorry, Edward, but everything depends on me. If Fernandes reaches England before I do—”

Spicer waved a hand. “I
’m only sorry that we can’t be ready to sail so soon. But I can’t risk my ship—”

“Your ship is done, Edward. Leave it to a salvage crew and let your men stay here in Ireland until they are well. I must return to England, but I
’ll need a witness to combat Simon Fernandes’ lies when I get there.” He lowered his voice and took a seat on a stool across from the sea captain. “You know the condition of those we left behind in Virginia. They’ll not last until spring unless we get help to them. I am begging you, friend. Come to England with me on the morrow.”

Spicer put down his pen and folded his hands. “Aye, sirrah, there
’s truth in your words. As long as Raleigh understands that I’m not deserting his ship here in Ireland—”

“Have you forgotten how Fernandes deserted you in the Bay of Portugal?” White felt his anger rising, but for Eleanor
’s sake, and the baby’s, he had to calm himself. “Come with me, Edward. I’faith, there are one hundred sixteen people on Roanoke who are depending on us, can we forget them?”

Spicer
’s eyes darkened in pity. “No,” he answered, closing his journal. “I cannot.”

The next morning John White and Edward Spicer took passage on the
Monkey,
which landed them at Marazion in Cornwall. From there they rode to Southampton, arriving on November eighth.