1609, Winter of the Dead: A Novel of the Founding of Jamestown (8 page)

“Not true!” said Nat. Richard bucked hard and rolled over, throwing Nat off. He tried to jump to his feet, but Nat grabbed his leg and jerked it out from under him, toppling him. Nat hopped to his feet and kicked at Richard, but Richard was up again, throwing wild blows with his fist in the direction of Nat's face. Most missed; several smacked his jaw soundly, bringing on a star-rush of pain.

“You do not even know how to fight!” Nat tried to laugh. “You are truly a child, Richard, and don't even know how to act a man!”

Richard rushed Nat and fell into him. The two took the air for a moment, then struck the ground, knocking the breath from Nat's lungs and a grunt from Richard's lips. The arm Nat had hurt in the hold of the ship was cut through with a new shard of pain.

And suddenly Nat was being kicked soundly in the side, and it wasn't Richard, for Richard was prone beside him, pounding him with his hands and panting.

“Stupid dogs!” came a voice from above, accompanied by more painful kicks to the ribs. “Stop that fighting before I throw you both into the river for the fish to eat!”

Nat rolled away from the boot and stood, his head swimming and his stomach threatening to pitch its contents. Richard received a few more kicks to his hip before he was able to get up. The disciplinarian was Edward Pising, clearly in no mood for boys.

“You're more trouble than you're worth!” the man swore, waving the hatchet he held in his sweaty hand. “If I see this again, I'll knock your heads off, don't think I won't!”

Nat snatched up his axe, trying to ignore the ache in his side and the fresh agony in his arm, and went back to stripping bark. Richard did the same. Neither spoke.

The morning wore on. Men stopped from their jobs of chopping, digging, and hammering to eat a meal of clams, berries, and leftover beef and hardtack from the ships. Gentlemen, who had occupied themselves with ordering the laborers about and complaining about everything from the smell of their tents to the lack of gold lying about on the top of the ground, sat by their fires and adjusted their collars and dabbed their sweaty foreheads with their handkerchiefs. The council president, Captain Wingfield, sat with Gabriel Archer, John Ratcliffe, and several of the gentlemen. Wingfield seemed to think gentlemen were right in keeping their hands clean. He seemed as lazy as the worst of them.

I should not want to be a man such as Wingfield,
Nat thought.
He is even worse than the blubbering Edward Brookes. Brookes was not a very bright man, and in that is his excuse. But Wingfield is clearly shrewd. Yet look at him, dallying around as if the rest of us were servants.

When no one was watching, Nat took a helmet, musket, and powder horn from the store tent and sneaked into the woods by the clearing. He knew it was dangerous and that the council would not approve, but he had to get away for a little while. Until Smith invited him on an expedition, he could at least check out the woods near the settlement.

He walked through the pines, as thick and as close together as old women telling each other secrets. He held the musket shoulder height. The underbrush was dense. Thorns grabbed his ankles, biting through the cotton stockings and into his flesh. Briars wrapped his sleeves and ripped them. But he kept on walking. He followed a winding stream a short ways, then climbed a boulder, slick with moss. He watched carefully, remembering the details of the landscape. When he had the chance, he would draw a map and keep it with his journal pages. This way he could return when the chance arose and find his riches alone.

The shadows in the woods were deep. Sunlight was swallowed up in the throats of the trees. Birds screamed overhead, mocking the young Englishman as he stumbled ahead. A vine wrapped around his bad foot and with a grunt he fell on his face, the musket flying from his grasp. His head struck a log, making a gash in his cheek and throwing stars in his field of vision.

“Ow,” Nat moaned, rolling over onto his back and touching his face. Above him was the tangle of branches. Beneath him, the ground was slick and damp with mosses and lichens. Cautiously he rolled to his side.

“I'm doing poorly as an explorer,” Nat sputtered, then took a long, deep breath. “Good thing Smith can't see me now. Brawling and tripping! Pitiful! Enough, now. Act as an explorer and you will be an explorer.”

He looked straight ahead.

Staring at him from the brush was a pair of eyes.

Screaming, Nat sat bolt upright. His hands went out before him to protect himself. And then something came down firmly on his shoulder.

He screamed again.

A voice said, “What is the matter with you, Nat?”

Nat's head snapped around. Jehu Robinson stood there, one hand on Nat's shoulder, the other on the hilt of his sword.

“I saw eyes!” Nat said, panting. “There, look! Savages staring at me, ready to cut me to pieces!”

Nat and Jehu looked into the brush.

A strange animal, short, squatty, and fat, winked at them with a wet, confused gaze. The animal seemed to be wearing a black mask and its tail was encircled with rings. Its nose twitched, and it lumbered off beneath the low branches of a pine tree and out of sight.

“Savages?” asked Jehu. He stood up and chuckled. “If that is the savage we expect to find near James Towne, then I would fear very little for our safety!”

Nat put his hand to his forehead. His legs hurt, his arm ached, his bad foot throbbed, and his face burned. And now embarrassment was heaped on top of it all.
I look like a fool!

“Can you walk, Nat?”

Nat nodded. He wouldn't make things worse by letting on how bad he felt.

“Good, then. Come back with me to the site. John Smith is looking for you and I told him I knew where you were. I saw you go into the woods.”

“Smith is looking for me?”

“Yes.”

Why? Maybe Samuel's sick and he needs another page for a while. Maybe Smith's tent has torn and needed stitching. Surely it's nothing more than a menial task.

But maybe it is something important.

Nat snatched up the musket and followed Jehu back to the clearing. His heart beat heavily with expectation and he forgot how hurt he was. He glanced once over his shoulder and thought he saw eyes again, watching him intently from behind a tree trunk. But then Nat blinked and the eyes were gone.

Men were finished with the midday meal and were back at work. The steady thumping and cracking of axe and hatchet filled the air. Gentlemen paced about, sipping from their mugs, dabbing their noses, avoiding the suggestions by the council that they try their hand at digging for shellfish along the riverbank or shaving bark from the trees.

But what caught Nat's eye immediately was the shallop. It was back in the water again, and a number of men were inside, dressed in helmets and armor, grasping oars, readying to set off on another exploration. Several bundles of provisions were in the boat. Smith stood by the shallop, talking to one of the soldiers and pointing up the river. Nat hurried over.

“Ah,” said Smith, turning to Nat. “I need you to come on this trip. Bring your cloak and get into the shallop. Keep that helmet and musket and take up armor. We leave in just a moment.”

Nat hurried to where he'd left his cloak hanging on a prickly branch of a pine tree. Richard was still slinging his axe, but he stopped when he saw Nat.

“I've been chosen,” Nat said.

Richard wiped his face. “Chosen for what?”

“To go on an expedition up the river with John Smith!”

Richard threw down the axe. “You? They asked for you to go instead of me? But I've already proven myself! Where are they going?”

“Does it matter? An adventure. Now I must go. They are nearly ready to leave.”

Richard grabbed his axe and slammed it into the wood with so much force that a huge shower of splinters rose into the air like a swarm of locusts.

Nat couldn't help but grin. Richard was such a child sometimes. But down at the shallop, as Nat put his musket inside, Smith said, “Oh, please ask the Mutton boy to come, too. I need him on this trip.”

Nat's grin fell. He walked halfway back to Richard, waved at him, and jerked his thumb in the direction of the shallop. Richard understood. With a whoop and cheer, he ran for his gear and joined the others by the river.

The shallop was pushed into the water, everyone took a paddle, and they headed northwest.

10

May 19, 1607

T
HE SHALLOP WAS
more comfortable than the pinnace, although it was in no way a luxury ship. There was a bit more room, and with so many men rowing, twelve on each side, none had the full brunt of the task. Nat sat near the back between two men he did not know. He didn't talk to anyone, but followed the others' lead in dipping, pulling, and lifting the oar through the river's bright water.

Richard was near the front of the boat next to Smith, and he was rowing, too, although he could barely keep up.

Why did Smith want him along?
Nat wondered.
He surely is no help at all.

In the humidity off the river, Nat's face, arms, and back were quickly covered in a slick sheen of sweat, and his arms grew tired with the motions. But he would die before he let the men know this. He was acting a sailor.

He felt good. He felt free.

Men near the back of the shallop gossiped about the precious metals they hoped to find on this particular trip, while in the front, Smith directed loudly, boasting that it would not be long before he helped them discover a short passage to the Pacific Ocean and secured himself yet more fame in the eyes of all English sailors and the king himself. “We find ourselves far remote from men and means,” said Smith. “Yet it is here that we shall discover the glory of a new route and bring England's power beyond that ever known on earth! All other countries henceforth shall be cowed by the mere mention of England's name and shall keep away for fear of our immutable power.”

There was murmured agreement, and Nat found his smile widening in spite of the growing weariness of his arms. Virginia was truly the place of opportunity for all.

They had been gone just over an hour upriver when Smith directed the shallop into a smaller tributary. This they followed until the creek became too shallow and reed-infested to venture farther. They would have to go back and travel farther upriver. Everyone climbed from the shallop and stood hip-deep as the shallop was turned around.

And then an arrow smacked into the shallop, nailing a sailor's forearm to the wood. He shrieked. Men spun about in the stream, trying to shoulder muskets and prepare for a fight, but it was too late. On the bank was a gathering of natives, bows drawn and arrows pointed at the Englishmen.

There was a very long moment of silence and staring. The only sounds were that of the water coursing around the men and the shallop, the birds nearby, and the heavy breathing of the man whose arm was pinned to the wood.

Richard, up to his neck in the murky water, lost his balance, cried out, slipped, and went underwater. Smith grabbed him up and shook him, growling that he should hold still and wait quietly.

Another long minute passed as the men in the water and the natives on the shore studied each other. The natives were nearly naked, wearing only leather or grass loincloths. Their hair was shaved on the right side; the left was very long and coated with some sort of oil. Some of the men had this hair twisted into a knot with birds' wings and pieces of antler woven through. One man's hair even appeared to have a dried human hand laced in it.

Nat felt his bladder go loose with fear; and it was only with a very small sense of relief that he was standing deep in the water.

Suddenly one native jumped into the water as the others stood motionless, the bows and arrows still trained at the Englishmen. The native reached the pinned sailor, wrapped his hands about the arrow, and jerked it free. The sailor made no sound other than a horrific grunting through his teeth, and he drew the bloodied arm up to his chest.

Now that the natives had made a move, Smith seemed confident to do the same. He raised one hand, palm flat, and dipped his head in a small movement of greeting. Nat sensed the gesture was to mean peace, although with the wounding of the sailor, Nat found it hard to believe Smith could offer anything on peaceful terms. But Smith was a survivor, and Nat had no choice but to follow his lead.

Several soldiers and sailors made the same gestures that Smith had. The natives conferred quietly among each other, and then one whirled his hand to welcome the settlers onto the bank of the creek.

Slowly, eying each other cautiously and the natives even more so, the men pulled themselves from the creek and followed the natives into the woods.

Two young natives, about Nat's age, brought up the rear, slapping their bows in the brush and talking softly.

Nat and Richard were near the back of the group, keeping as close to the other men as possible without running into them.

“They are going to kill us,” Richard murmured. “How could Smith have let us go with them this way? Should we have not fought with our muskets?”

“Be quiet,” Nat said, although he was certain the terrified pounding of his heart could be heard as surely as the pounding of English boot-steps on the ground.

They came to a clearing, and in it, a tiny village. About fifteen houses sat about in no sense of pattern and with no true lanes. These houses were small with rounded roofs and covered with mats of marsh reeds. In one spot there was a grove of fruit trees, and in another place a variety of crops were growing. A tiny, three-sided hut on stilts was in the center of the garden, and a boy holding a long branch peeked out and stared at the strangers. Small boys in loincloths and small girls with no clothes at all came out from the houses and watched, wide-eyed, as the Englishmen were led through the village. Adults then joined them, men and women, who knelt on the ground and dug at the dirt with their nails and made loud noises.