Serpent Never Sleeps (19 page)

"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 smoldering, 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.

The insult rang loud in my ears, like a clap of thunder. I said nothing. It stunned me. I rose to my feet and faced her. Still I was silent. Suddenly I thought: She is right. I do feel calm. I do feel safe. While my accuser, while Tom Barlow and Pocahontas and Humility cowering under her blanket, face death.

I got to my feet and found the fireplace. I threw the ring into the fire. I went to my copper pan hanging on the wall; smoke had dimmed its luster.

I wiped the smoke off with my sleeve and looked at myself. The king's mark, the bloody smudge that had never left me since the morning it was placed there,
that I had tried to wash away time after time, the sign no one on the ship or in Bermuda or Jamestown had ever been able to see, was gone.

Another fagot, the largest of all, came down the chimney and rolled into the room. The child was safe for a moment under her heavy blanket. But the others were at the door.

Pocahontas said, "The werowance is right about the guards. They will be here but, traveling in the dark, not before morning."

"We'll not last that long," Tom said. "I'll go outside and talk to the werowance. While I talk, try to slip away and hide in the woods."

He reached for the latch, but Pocahontas grasped his arm and, holding him back, opened the door and went out. A gust of wind blew through the cabin. The fagot that lay on the floor burst into flames. I gathered Humility in my arms. Beyond the doorway Pocahontas was talking to the werowance. I called to her but she did not answer.

Emma passed me, dragging the matchlock. At the door she struggled to raise the heavy gun, took careless aim, and pressed the trigger. Not a sound, not a word, came from the werowance as he toppled backward and lay very still.

Arrows and howls filled the night. One of the arrows was afire. I saw it coming through the sky. It was coming straight toward me, slowly, in a flaming arc. I had time to stand out of its way, but I could not move. For a fleeting moment I thought of the serpent
ring and regretted that I had thrown it away. With a fiery sound, shedding sparks, the arrow grazed my cheek and passed harmlessly away.

Now that the werowance was dead, his warriors ran for the river, yelling as they went. We huddled in the moonlight, watching the cabin burn to the ground, taking half the tobacco plants with it.

At dawn the guards marched up from the river. Pocahontas heard them before they reached the clearing.

"Tell them I am eating my breakfast with Reverend Whitaker," she said, laughing as she ran.

"Good riddance," Emma Swinton said.

Ashes smoldered in the rising sun. The chimney stood tall and straight against the sky. But the pine logs hewn so carefully, the little window, the curtain, the big wide bed, were gone.

Tom said, "I have work to do."

"
We
have work to do," I corrected him.

He smiled and picked me up, with Humility in my arms, and whirled us around.

"When do we begin?" I asked.

"We could start today," Tom said. "Except the ashes are too blasted hot."

Pocahontas was back with the Reverend Whitaker by noon. Tom and I, worried that by some ill chance she might have been captured by the Mattaponi, went across the river to the parsonage. We found her eating a hearty meal of quail and cornbread, while the Reverend looked on with tight lips.

Later he prevailed upon us to stay for a service, it being Sunday. A goodly number of Henrico's settlers were there, including John Rolfe, who sat hand in hand with Pocahontas. The Reverend read from a Bible Captain Argall had brought from England.

I was so excited by what I heard that afterward I told the Reverend Whitaker that it sounded like the Bible I had grown up with—the New Testament William Tyndale had translated.

"Yes, that was a hundred years ago," the Reverend said. "This is a new Bible. It's just been published. King James chose some scholars and they put their heads together and brought forth this one. It's called the King James Bible."

"King James really did this?"

"It was his idea and he did it."

I wondered how the man who believed in witches and took delight in punishing them with leg irons and racks could be responsible for such splendor.

"But it sounds like Tyndale," I said. "It sings like his Bible."

"It should," Reverend Whitaker said. "More than half is Tyndale. I have counted. I spent time counting the Sermon on the Mount. Two hundred eighty-seven words in the Sermon are from William Tyndale.

"And he was burned at the stake for his labor."

Months later, when Tom and I were married, the Reverend Whitaker read from the new King James Bible. His pleasant voice soared through the chapel. The words possessed wings. They made up for the lack of flowers, the storm that piled snow against the parsonage walls and closed most of the roads so that few of our neighbors could come.

Two months later, when John Rolfe and Pocahontas were married, things were far different. The wedding took place in the Jamestown church. It was April and the church was filled with wildflowers. Bells announced the wedding. Everyone came, even the bride's uncle, Opitchapan, and two of her young brothers. The Reverend Bucke beamed from the pulpit.

Her clothes, unlike mine, were elaborate and new. She wore a white muslin tunic, a trailing veil, and a long pink robe. Around her neck was a double chain of pearls, a handsome gift from her father who, though
he approved of the marriage, had proudly refused to attend.

Never had I seen a happier man than John Rolfe, unless it was my Tom Barlow. Pocahontas seemed happy, too. They went to live in a house on the James River, near Henrico, on land Chief Powhatan had given them. Rolfe called their new house Varina after a variety of tobacco brought from Spain.

With the wedding, a sort of peace settled upon the colony. Everyone was pleased, except King James. When he was informed of the marriage, he fell into a violent fit and accused Rolfe of high treason for marrying the daughter of a savage king.

With his hand on his heart, he angrily promised that no offspring of John Rolfe would ever inherit a foot of Virginia land. But when he was told that the eight chieftains of the Powhatan Confederacy were ready to sign peace treaties, he had second thoughts. When told that his picture would be scribed on copperplate and presented to the chieftains to wear round their necks on heavy copper chains, he was flattered. Grudgingly, he consented to Rolfe's marriage to Pocahontas, though she was still a barbarian and lacked a soul.

Varina was not far from our home, a short canoe ride and a mile's walk, so I saw Pocahontas every week or two. When she first moved to Varina she visited us and, unbeknownst to her husband, brought four of his special Spanish tobacco roots, which she showed Tom how to plant.

I was surprised when the Rolfes sailed off to England with their new son and a retinue of ten tribespeople, men and women. I was fearful that something might happen to her in that land of somber skies.

Word came from time to time about her, but long after things had happened, there being few ships from England at this time. A letter written by Captain John Smith introduced her to Queen Anne. She was a guest at court functions and lordly festivities. Her portrait was painted by a famous artist. Engravings were made of it and one was sent to Jamestown.

She was wearing a mantle of red velvet and a dark underdress festooned with gold buttons and a lacy collar. Banded with gold, her hat had the look of a jaunty coronet. Her black hair was masked by a reddish wig that I assumed must be popular among London's high-born ladies.