The Lost Duchess (34 page)

‘What plot?’

‘A conspiracy led by Wingina and the Secotans involving all the foremost tribes in the region. They planned to launch an attack with a force of over seven hundred bowmen together with at least that number again from the outlying tribes. Once we’d become sufficiently weakened through hunger, then they’d strike.’

‘I suppose Lane saw the withdrawal of food as a sign that the plot was being put into effect.’

‘He did, and when he learnt that the outlying tribes were on the point of assembling, he decided to attack first.’

‘How did he find out about all this?’

‘Through Skiko …’

‘Skiko!’ Kit struggled to hide his disbelief. ‘Skiko, the boy held hostage?’

Lacy regarded Kit cautiously. ‘The same. He confided in Lane because he wished to befriend us just as his father had done.’

‘Did Lane tell you that?’

‘Yes. Maybe the boy hoped to win his freedom that way.’

‘Maybe.’ Kit didn’t argue; he wanted Lacy to continue. ‘So what happened?’

‘We were ordered to gather up all the canoes on Roanoke and kill any savages we found on the island. Lane wanted their heads.’

‘You decapitated them?’

The Irishman nodded, grim faced.

‘We dealt with as many as we could get hold of. Some fled into the woods, but we crossed over to Dasemonkepeuc under cover of darkness before they could reach the mainland and raise the alarm. Then Lane asked to speak to Wingina. He said that he wanted to complain about the release of Skiko …’

Kit cut in quickly. ‘Had the boy escaped?’

‘No. Lane only said that to persuade Wingina to receive him in the village.’

Kit’s smile faded.

‘The ruse worked?’

‘Yes. All twenty-five of us marched in. Then Lane gave the signal for attack: ‘
Christ our victory.
’ With those words we all opened fire. Many of the savages were killed outright. Wingina fell as if dead
but it was just a feint. When our backs were turned he got up and ran away. He was wily, like I said. It was Lane’s manservant who finally tracked him into the forest and slew him. He brought back Wingina’s head with which Lane was singularly delighted. We collected many more heads that day and left them for the savages as a warning. That was Lane’s way of showing them how we deal with traitors.’

Kit did not ask how the heads had been left but he could guess. Lacy shuffled uncomfortably from foot to foot. Kit turned to the pointed stakes around the palisade, still raw and leaking sap which had become black with trapped flies. He must not push Lacy too hard.

‘What of Wanchese?’

‘We didn’t find him. Either he escaped or he wasn’t there.’

‘But he’d have seen the heads on returning to the village.’

‘He would; they couldn’t be missed.’

‘And was the boy Skiko then let go?’

‘I told you, I don’t know. Drake arrived a week later and we all left after the wrecking storm which carried away the ship that Drake was going to give us. We didn’t know then that Grenville’s supply fleet was close. We thought that Drake offered us at least a good chance of staying alive.’

‘But the boy was in the fort when you left?’

Lacy turned to him with sweat beading over his sunburnt skin.

‘Why do you keep asking after that boy?’

Kit gave Lacy a wry smile. ‘I’m curious, that’s all. I have a boy too. By a savage,’ he added. ‘But that’s another story. Tell me yours first.’

Lacy sucked air through his broken teeth, and then shot Kit a look of concession. ‘Skiko wasn’t in the place where he was usually kept
when we left, and three of Lane’s men didn’t make the final roll call. It’s possible they’d been sent to take the boy back to Menatonon. I never found out.’

Kit balled his fist and pushed his knuckles against his brow.

‘Dear Christ, I hope he lived.’

‘So do I, by all the saints. We never meant that boy any hurt. I hope those men left behind are still alive too, and those of Coffin’s company who survived Wanchese’s attack. But it don’t look good for any of them, do it?’

‘No, it doesn’t look good.’

Lacy drank and handed Kit the tankard that he’d almost drained empty. Kit finished it in silence. He looked back at Lacy, feeling the Irishman’s remorse though, heaven knows, the damage that had been done was not Lacy’s fault.

He beckoned for Lacy to follow him and left the fort for the central clearing.

Once he reached the shelter he shared with Rob he asked Lacy to wait by the entrance, then he rummaged inside for the brandy he’d promised. He found the keg by his sea chest under a pile of possessions he’d never use: spurs and a bridle, nether-stocks and a ruff. He pulled out two sleeves with lace cuffs and handed them to Lacy along with the keg.

‘Alawa might like these,’ he said, thrusting the sleeves into Lacy’s hands then placing the keg at his feet.

He didn’t wait for Lacy’s reply. He’d seen Emme walking by.

‘Mistress Emme!’ He paced towards her, not sure what he’d say, but knowing he had all the information he was likely to get. He was more certain than ever that now she had to go.

She looked at him with wide dark eyes that both appealed and
drew away. The next moment she had turned her back on him, and he felt the sting even while he accepted that her distancing would make his task easier. She no longer cared for him; he was sure of that now, but he still didn’t know how to begin talking to her. How to gain her attention? Should he reach for her? He never knew. She was like an unbroken filly, calm one moment, bucking the next, as unpredictable as the wind and as volatile as quicksilver. Sometimes he felt as if she could not stand to have him touch her, but there’d been other times when she’d seem to yearn for his caress. That was all in the past. She would not wish for his comfort now.

He walked in front of her.

‘I have something to say to you,’ he began, and gestured for her to follow him to a place where they could be alone, round the back of the Dares’ house facing the nettles, the spot where they’d spoken before.

‘You should know the truth of what has happened here …’

She kept a step away from him and looked down.

‘What truth?’

‘If thus thou vanishest, thou tell’st the world It is not worth leave-taking.’

—Antony and Cleopatra
by William Shakespeare, Act 5, Scene 2

‘Emme!’

The cry brought Emme running, cutting into her brooding over what Kit had told her about Roanoke’s dark secrets. The future looked bleak, but her fear for it was forgotten at the sound of Mistress Dare’s scream.

Emme found her mistress doubled over, the floor wet beneath her skirts, and she knew that the lady’s time had come, her waters had broken, and she must now play her part in earnest to help her mistress be delivered.

Gone was any nicety. She did not baulk when Mistress Viccars waddled in, one of the older dames and a mother, who started giving orders as soon as she arrived to fetch extra bedding, boil
water, take away soiled sheets and a chamber pot, bring cloths and candles, prepare the swaddling bands, thread a needle with catgut, and lay out the instruments that might be needed to assist with the imminent birth: scissors, bowls and two long-handled spoons. Emme had no idea why the spoons could be useful, but she did as she was told, and she made sure her mistress had plenty of broth to give her nourishment between her moments of distress, when she gasped and strained, and Emme knew the lady’s womb was tightening like a fist, harder and longer with each racking spasm.

This was a woman’s greatest trial, the ordeal that had to come before the fulfilment of her life, if it did not end with her death or that of her baby. Emme was glad to help and observe, though some of what she witnessed made her stomach turn over, and her dread of the worst made her mind reel with prayers. One day, she too might suffer in agony before giving birth. If that happened, please God, may she not be alone.

All night her mistress laboured, writhing, sweating, and pleading for mercy. By the first grey trace of dawn she was weakening, but her contractions were becoming greater. Emme was startled from a fitful doze by a piercing screech of pain.

She shook the old dame awake, took her mistress’s hand, and wiped her brow with a sponge dipped in cool water. Mistress Viccars grunted and felt between the lady’s legs, shooing Ananias Dare away when he poked his head round the door, telling him to go back to bed.

‘Four fingers wide,’ the dame announced to Emme. ‘Nearly there.’

What was four fingers wide? Emme guessed with a shudder, and tried to give her mistress some comfort.

‘All will be well. Breathe deeply and slowly.’ This was something
she had learnt from talking to the mothers. They had told her that when the pains came, a woman should fill her lungs then let out her breath by small degrees. She found herself doing the same to help her mistress along, taking in great gulps of warm steamy air amidst the fug of bodily intimacy and the smell of sweat and blood.

‘Oh, God,’ the lady cried. ‘Help me.’ She bent forwards and bore down.

‘Push,’ Emme encouraged her. ‘Push harder.’

‘The child is coming,’ Mistress Viccars said. ‘You must pant now, Eleanor.’

Another spasm took hold of the lady, and she clung onto Emme as if to drag herself off the mattress.

‘Hold her down,’ the dame instructed, while she worked with her hands where Emme had no wish to look, and her shadow loomed in the guttering candlelight over the spattered canvas screens.

Emme held her mistress against the bolsters, feeling the lady’s muscles locking hard in another straining push.

‘Pant, don’t push!’ Mistress Viccars cried. ‘If you push now, you’ll tear.’

‘Pant!’ Emme repeated, and heard little gasping sobs as her mistress tried to obey.

The sound that came next was like a net of fish spilling open, a slithering wet gush of squirming release. Her mistress moaned and cried in torment.

‘I’m splitting,’ she wailed.

Emme turned in horror, seeing Mistress Viccars hold up a baby by the ankles that was blue and greasy as if covered in lard. Was it alive? It didn’t move. The next moment, the dame slapped its buttocks and the baby began to cry.

‘A girl,’ she announced. ‘A fine little girl.’

The dame wrapped the infant in a swaddling sheet, and placed her on her mother’s breast, guiding the babe’s quivering mouth to her mother’s swollen teat.

‘Welcome to the world, little one.’ She stooped and gave Mistress Dare a kiss. ‘God bless you, Eleanor. You should be proud. What will you call her?’

‘Virginia,’ Mistress Dare murmured, weeping and stroking her baby’s little head. ‘We’ll name her after her birthplace. Please tell Ananias that his baby has arrived. I hope he will not mind that ’tis not a boy.’

‘He will be a fool if he does,’ Mistress Viccars replied, and delivered the afterbirth while the babe was suckling. Then she cut and tied the cord, showing Emme how, and wiped Mistress Dare down, while Emme changed the sheets and tidied away the spoons that had not been required.

What would Ananias think? Emme wondered as she went to fetch him. Would he be as happy as she was? She felt a rush of elation to have been part of such a miracle, despite the ordeal from which it came, the mess and the pain; she was sure she had never witnessed anything quite so beautiful before.

*

The storm still bowed the lolling pine tops but the rain had eased, and Emme needed release from the confinement of the Dares’ house, so she took the baby outside, wrapped up securely in a shawl, and sang a gentle lullaby while she rocked the bundle in her arms, and paced around the clearing that would, one day God grant, be the child’s city square. Little Virginia Dare was only a week old and already she’d turned her mother’s life upside down, and Emme’s
too, demanding to be fed at all hours, coaxed, winded and soothed, insisting on those essentials that everyone around her took for granted: warmth, nourishment and a place to sleep, the reassurance of the familiar and the comfort of human touch. Emme felt sure that the lullaby was one that her own mother used to sing to her; it came without effort from the depths of her earliest memories, and as she murmured the song softly, with the babe against her breast, she felt what it meant even though the child was not her own.

Lullay mine liking, my dear one, my sweeting

Lullay, my dear heart, mine own dear darling.

The newborn had narrowed her world and opened everything out. For a week she had barely ventured beyond the lower room of the Dares’ house, the place where she looked after the babe when her mistress was resting, where she slept, ate and washed; cooked, mended and prayed, often sharing with others, and attended to all the chores that could not easily be done outside on days like today, and yesterday and the day before, when the wind tore around as if it was trying to scrape the island bald.

The babe tied her to this patch of earth, to this windswept island and makeshift home, yet in Virginia was the wide future with the promise of the new land in her name: the first child of English parents ever born in the New World, and already not the last since, only days later, Mistress Harvie’s child had also been born. This was the start of the next age, the first generation of the new country, and who knew what America would be like in generations to come. Perhaps, where there was now wilderness, there would be roads leading to fair cities, and farmland and villages: a land of peace and
plenty for the blessed children of tomorrow. It was her privilege to be here now, holding that future in her arms: precious, vulnerable and perfectly lovely. God keep Virginia safe.

She was still humming the lullaby when she felt a tugging at her skirts and looked down on the thick mop of hair belonging to young Georgie Howe, so blond it was almost white. Maybe he and Virginia would grow old together in this place. Maybe they would love and marry and have golden-haired children of their own, though, at that moment, Georgie plainly had other concerns on his mind.

‘Have you seen my marbles, Mistress Emme? Rob says we can play cherry pit since it’s too windy for fishing.’

She laid her hand on the boy’s shoulder.