Roanoke (The Keepers of the Ring) (37 page)

‘
Twas a cruel fight at sea,
he wrote in his journal,
but just punishment by God for the thievery of our evil disposed mariners. Both vessels returned to England without performing our intended voyage for the relief of the planters in Virginia, which, thereby, we were not a little distressed.

But the ones who would suffer the most were the colonists who waited in Virginia.

Thirty-five

A
t the City of Raleigh, Ananias Dare waited for the last of his twenty men to board the pinnace, then gave the order to raise the anchor. As the ship slipped past the beachhead near the village, the men aboard called jaunty farewells to the women who had gathered on the shore. Eleanor waved tentatively, unhappy to see Ananias leaving again, and ten-month-old Virginia managed a childish wave from her mother’s arms. Ananias saw Jocelyn Colman waving weakly at the minister, her baby held close in a maternal embrace. He had not wanted to take the minister on this trip, but Thomas Colman had insisted upon journeying back to Roanoke and Croatoan.

Ananias frowned.
The minister insisted on entirely too much these days, and usually got his way.

The pinnace sailed easily through the waters of the Chowan River, and Ananias turned from his thoughts of the minister and looked over the bow of the ship.
John White and his relief supplies were long overdue, and Ananias knew ‘twas time to check on the welfare of the men holding a lookout on Croatoan Island. An unsettling thought haunted him: would the thirty men on Croatoan come to the same bloody end as the fifteen caretaker colonists Grenville had left on Roanoke?

The crew aboard the pinnace spotted Roanoke Island after two hours, and as they sailed round to the fort, Ananias heard frantic whispers from the men behind him.
Even from this distance they could see that the fort had been razed, but whether by an act of nature or hostile savages they could not tell. The once tall timbers of the palisade stood as blackened stumps behind the sandy beach.

They lowered the shallop and disembarked.
As soon as the shallop hit soft sand, Ananias jumped out and waded toward the beach. The structure of the palisade still stood, though ‘twas burned, and the timbers that had supported the houses stood as well, though blackened by the same fire which had ravaged the palisade. But through an act of God’s mercy, the timber carved with the word “Croatoan” stood unmarred and Ananias breathed a sigh of relief. If John White had come here, he would have gone to Croatoan. And if God was faithful, his men still waited there. Perhaps they entertained Governor White even now.

Wasting no further time on Roanoke, Ananias called for the others to rejoin the ship.

Jocelyn placed her baby to sleep in the trunk and stretched out on her bed, her strength utterly gone. Childbirth had left her weaker than she had imagined it could, and the demands from working for survival and nursing an infant dwindled her feeble strength to nothingness by the end of the day. If not for Audrey’s and Eleanor’s help, Jocelyn knew she would never have been able to keep her home and family together.

And as much as she wanted Thomas to feel a part of the family, she was relieved that he had gone with Ananias to Croatoan.
She could not tell if he resented the baby or thought that overt affection was frivolous, but he watched her disapprovingly when she cooed at Regina and his critical attitude made her uneasy. On several occasions after the infant’s birth she had asked him to hold the baby, but he refused with a somber look that broke her heart every time she saw it.

His brooding, sober presence made her feel self-conscious as she tended the baby, and the way he averted his eyes when she nursed the child at first made her feel guilty, then angry.
By heaven, she was doing nothing wrong! Why did he refuse to enjoy his own child?

But he explained nothing, and treated her little better than he would a casual friend.
Ofttimes when the baby was asleep he would read something or tell Jocelyn a story, and on those rare nights she felt that mayhap his heart would thaw in time. But then the baby would cry, or stir in sleep, and Jocelyn would rush to Regina’s side. When she returned, the walls would once again stand behind Thomas’ eyes.

God had answered her prayer and given her a daughter, but since the baby
’s birth all signs of his affection had vanished. She used to think his heart distant; now she wondered if he had a heart at all.

She sighed and closed her eyes as she stretched out in weariness on the bed.
He had left home once and come home a changed man. Mayhap God would work a miracle again.

Thomas stood at the side of the pinnace and stared at the mighty western ocean.
Its vastness never ceased to awe him, and as he gazed at the distant horizon, he felt a sudden urge to flee. ‘Twas the same urge that had propelled him into John White’s dockside office.

I
’faith, it felt good to get away from the village. Everything he had left behind in England had surrounded him again in the City of Raleigh—the snooping Pharisees, the rigid standards of behavior, the tendency for lawlessness that corrupted peaceful living. He had run from a dead wife and a son in England, here he longed to escape from a living wife and a daughter.

He chuckled bitterly.
Who can say, God, that you do not laugh at your servants?
Jonah, running from his calling, fled the great fish only to find himself parched by a desert sun. From the water to a desert, from a son to a daughter, from a dead wife to a living one. There was no escaping God’s justice.

The men on Croatoan embraced their fellow colonists eagerly, then led them to their small circle of huts inside a high palisade.
“These men,” explained Richard Taverner, secure in his role as leader, “live simply, with fish for food and water from the rain barrels. We have a watch posted on the beach during every daylight hour.”

“
Do you light signal fires at night?” Ananias asked.

Taverner shook his head.
“No. The danger—”

Ananias pounded his fist upon his palm in frustration.
“What danger? Our danger of starvation is greater than any you might face, man! If John White does not see your fires here, he’ll go round to Roanoke and waste precious time.”

Taverner pressed his lips together firmly.
“With respect, sir, you don’t know what you are talking about. Two days ago we spotted a sail off the coast and ran down to the beach. We laid a fire and were about to light it, when one of our men with an eagle eye saw that the ship bore not the flag of England, but of Spain. Spanish marauders, they were, looking for our colony, no doubt. We doused our fires and lay low for the day, hoping they had not caught sight of us. Fortunately, God was on our side, and the ship never came back.”

Ananias caught his breath.
Spaniards! Truly, he had been so eager to welcome an English supply ship that he had nearly forgotten about the war on the high seas. If the war had escalated, ‘twas possible that White would not be able to get ships through . . .

“
Thank you.” Ananias clasped Taverner on the shoulder. “You’ve done a good work. We pray God will keep you in good health as you serve him and our interests here.”

“
Aye,” Taverner answered. “And ask the good reverend to say a prayer for us, will you? John White promised to bring us wives, you know.”

Ananias raised an eyebrow until he caught the gleam in Taverner
’s eye and realized the man was joking.

As the pinnace threaded her way home up the Chowan, Thomas stood at the railing with Christopher Cooper.
“Taverner was pretty funny, eh, Reverend?” Cooper asked, his eyes squinting in the sunlight that reflected off the river. “Bring ‘em wives? Where’s John White supposed to get wives for that scruffy lot?”

“
Yes, he was funny,” Thomas agreed, nodding politely.

“
Of course, you didn’t have any trouble landing yourself a pretty wife, eh, Reverend?” Cooper persisted, elbowing Thomas roughly. “‘Twasn’t fair, though, you didn’t give the rest of us a decent shot at the prize. Mayhap if you’d waited until we landed, things would have turned out differently.”

Thomas sighed and moved away, hoping the man would take the hint.
If Cooper didn’t leave him alone, he just might tell the entire story, and then what would they think?
They would think you crazy
, the answer came,
because you live with a beautiful woman who makes you weak with longing every time she glances your way, and yet you ignore her, turn from her, snuff out every affectionate moment that springs up between you.

Thomas bit his lip until he tasted blood.
The thought of Jocelyn at home, his baby at her breast, sent a wave of warmth along his pulses and made his knees weak. Home had been bearable, at least, when she was swollen and heavy with child, and he had not been afraid to stay by her side when she was near death.

But God, in his harsh wisdom, had brought her from the brink of heaven and kept her in Thomas
’ house. How could he endure living with her now, when she had never looked more beautiful?

Life settled again into a normal return after Ananias and the men returned from Croatoan.
John White had not come as yet, Ananias told the village, but surely each day that passed brought him closer.

As Jocelyn gradually convalesced from the exhaustion and travail of childbirth, she learned that by inviting the Indians to help her, Ananias had opened a door to the Indian village of Ohanoak.
The Chawanoac Indians who dwelt nearby, while friendly, had hitherto avoided daily contact with the English. But since the werowance, Abooksigun, and his wife had entered the City of Raleigh at Ananias’ invitation, a steady stream of Indian visitors arrived at the gates of the English palisade every morning.

They brought furs, fish, and seed corn to trade.
After spreading their wares on the ground, the savages stood back and waited for offers to be made. The villagers learned quickly that the Indian manner of trading involved equal reciprocation. Nothing was given without the expectation of something in return, and nothing could be accepted without giving a gift in kind.

But the Indians gave much more than they took in pots and axes and trinkets.
Their women taught the English women how to treat the bites of lice, ticks, fleas, and mosquitoes, and through their example the English learned that sweat baths eased the pain of arthritis and rheumatism, knowledge that greatly cheered Roger Bailie. Boils and bruises in the colony came to be treated by Indian poultices, and once when Jocelyn was about to make rags of a dress which had become infested with lice, an Indian woman sternly took the garment from her and carried it outside to an anthill. Jocelyn watched in honest puzzlement until she realized that the lice were a verifiable feast for an ant colony. By the morning of the next day, the dress was free from both varieties of insects.

The path between the two walled villages gradually grew wider and an
“open door” policy soon bound the English and Indian villages together. While the Indians were quick to pick up basic words of the English language, Jocelyn noticed that most of her fellow colonists were reluctant to speak the Indian tongue because they were quietly convinced that all things English were vastly superior. But without the help of the Indians or a miraculous provision from John White’s promised supply fleet, Jocelyn doubted they would survive the coming winter.

According to the dictates of their Indian friends, throughout the summer of 1588 the colonists planted, harvested, and stored food for winter.
The young savages taught the English boys how to build weirs to trap fish in the river, and the English women learned how to build “hurdles” of sticks, from which they hung pieces of meat or fish to smoke over a smoldering fire.

With Regina securely tied onto her back in the Indian manner, Jocelyn visited Pauwau, the wife of the werowance, and learned that this aged woman had saved her life during the travail of childbirth.
During her first awkward visit with Pauwau she sensed that the Indians did not care for effusive thanks, but preferred to receive gratitude in the form of respect and an attentive ear. So Jocelyn became Pauwau’s student, of sorts, and from the older woman she learned much. As the summer sun slowly encouraged their crops to bloom into ripeness, she sat at Pauwau’s feet and learned to make coiled clay cooking pots even as she prayed for an opportunity to bring light into the Indians’ spiritual darkness.

Through she did all she could to aid the colony
’s survival, Jocelyn tried to remember that she and Thomas were responsible for ministering to and evangelizing the Indians. In her time with the women of the Indian village, Jocelyn talked often of God the Father, creator of the world. One afternoon while she helped several Indian women make buckskin, she told them that the creator Father had made deer for man’s use.