Roanoke (The Keepers of the Ring) (38 page)

The women nodded.
“We know of this god,” Pauwau said, nodding gravely. “He is Mantoac, and is older than the earth.”

Jocelyn paused, her fingers deep in the sudsy mush that resulted from boiling deer brains and liver.
“I suppose it matters not what we call him,” she said, nodding. “As long as we serve him. But do you know of his son, Jesus, the Christ?”

The women shook their heads as they pounded the sudsy animal skin with their fists.
“Mantoac has many sons,” Hurit spoke up. The pretty woman was Pauwau’s daughter-in-law. “He made other gods to help his work. The sun, the moon, the stars. These are lesser gods, and they have made all creatures.”

Jocelyn held up a disputing finger.
“No, my friends, the sun, moon, and stars are mere creations. Jesus, the Christ, is the only Son of God.”

Wide-eyed but uncomprehending, the women only stared at her as they worked the hide.
Jocelyn sighed. ‘Twould have been better if they had known nothing of God at all; then they would have welcomed the news of a loving creator. But their culture had merged God’s truth with paganism’s deception, and she knew only patience and gentleness would help her untangle their confused ideas.

Close association with the nearby Indian tribe weakened previously inviolate English standards, and for weeks Thomas used his sermons to address the evils of heathen morality.
Though they all knew, Thomas said, that the heathen practice of giving young girls for a night’s pleasure was an abominable practice, there were more subtle evils of which the English had to beware. The Indian dances, he warned, were not to be imitated or practiced; their songs were not to be sung, the games of the Indian children not taught to English children. The Indian women who went without shirts or cloaks in the hot days of summer were not to be allowed into the English village without proper and modest clothing, and though Indian poultices and salves could be used for healing, they had to be made in the English village, so the colonists could be assured that no heathen incantations had been uttered as the medicine was being prepared.

The colonists bore Thomas
’ restrictions without comment. Except for Beth Glane and the doctor John Jones, who were forever peering through bushes and eavesdropping at windows to report on the sinfulness of their neighbors, most colonists were too busy with their work to participate in games and dances and music. The women were only too happy to learn how to make poultices and salves themselves, for ‘twas much more practical to have the natural “recipe” than to journey to the Indian village every time someone was injured or required an ointment.

But as the hot days wore on and John White
’s supply ships did not arrive from England, one standard of civilization slipped irreparably: clothing. In June’s blistering heat, the men began to go without their worn out doublets, wearing shirts while in camp and frequently going shirtless while fishing. The women also began to economize on their clothing by shortening their skirts and removing layers of petticoats. But the lowering of these standards, Thomas proclaimed from his pulpit, was the beginning of a slow slide into paganism.

Jocelyn had to laugh when she considered her own wardrobe. In her hurry to pack Jocelyn’s trunk, Audrey had thrown in an odd assortment of clothing, none of which was really practical for the wilderness of America. If she were in London, Jocelyn would have been well prepared. To dress, she would have donned a smock and French farthingale with its ridiculous hoops to hold the skirt away from her hips and abdomen, then a series of petticoats, then her kirtle. Audrey used to require ten minutes just to fasten the row of hooks down the left side of the bodice Jocelyn wore atop the kirtle, and another ten to pin the bodice’s hem to the kirtle’s waist at front and back. Still another ten minutes were required to pin the sleeves to the bodice, if, perchance, they hadn’t been unpinned when Jocelyn had last worn the dress.

All of these pieces
—smocks, farthingales, pins, and an assortment of kirtles, bodices, nightgowns, and half a dozen sleeves, two of which did not match—lay in Jocelyn’s trunk, yet in the colony she wanted to wear nothing but a kirtle and bodice—mayhap a petticoat, if the day were cool.

‘
Twas no wonder that English women looked enviously at the Indian women in the heat of June and July. Buckskin was wonderfully soft and moved easily, but ‘twas too hot and heavy to wear in a skirt to the ankles.

Ignoring Thomas
’ admonitions, Rose Payne, Joyce Archard, and Margaret Lawrence made themselves mid-calf, one-piece dresses of buckskin and wore them to church one Sunday morning. Jocelyn saw them and held her breath while Thomas looked over his congregation. Rising, he stood before the lectern and solemnly proclaimed that the City of Raleigh was on its way to hell.

“
Buckskin is
bucksin!
” he ranted. Jocelyn blinked at the ferocity of his attack, but did not dare turn around to see how Mistresses Payne, Archard, and Lawrence were handling the news. “Buckskin is immodest, ‘tis a waste of God’s resources, and it harkens to the heathen, pagan community which spawned its use. No decent, godly woman should wear it, and no woman in
bucksin
will enter into this house of God!”

The three women filed quietly out of church that afternoon with almost-tangible clouds of guilt over their heads, and Jocelyn wondered what her husband would do if John White did not come soon.
For until they found a plant suitable for weaving into cloth, buckskin and furs would be the only materials available for dress, immodest or otherwise.

In the late summer evenings Jocelyn nursed Regina by the
hearth while Thomas poured over his prayer book. Her hope that the baby would soften his heart had thus far proved futile, for with the advent of summer and the planting season, Thomas had joined in the work with the other men and had little time for family life. While other men came home and rested or enjoyed their families, Thomas went straight from the supper table to fetch his Bible and prayer book. When Jocelyn had cleared their supper dishes away, he returned to the board and scratched his sermons out on parchment with a quill pen, often working until Jocelyn and the baby had fallen asleep.

One night Thomas came home in a foul mood, and wore a look of stern displeasure throughout supper and even as he worked on his sermon.
After Regina fell asleep, Jocelyn added another log to the fire and crawled up into her bed. Noting his persistent frown, she took her battered copy of Marcus Aurlieus from her trunk and began to read aloud:

Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness—all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil. But for my part I have long perceived the nature of good and its nobility, the nature of evil and its meanness, and also the nature of the culprit himself, who is my brother; therefore none of those things can injure me, for nobody can implicate me in what is degrading. Neither can I be angry with my brother or fall foul of him; for he and I were born to work together, like a man’s two hands, feet, or eyelids, or like the upper and lower rows of his teeth. To obstruct each other is against Nature’s law—and what is irritation or aversion but a form of obstruction?”

“What are you reading?” Thomas’ tone was sharp with annoyance.

Jocelyn lifted her eyes from the book.
“Marcus Aurelius.”

“
Why do you read that section aloud?”

She paused.
In truth, she had been thinking that the passage might do him good. He did not work well with others—not with Ananias, or the Indians, or with her. Though they were married and had a child, never had she felt that they toiled together as a man and wife should. She labored in what she considered a form of ministry with the women as Thomas worked with the men, but never did they discuss the other’s endeavor, rarely did they speak at all. The slight affection he had shown her since arriving at their new home had vanished, and now he regarded her with open disaffection, afraid to touch her as they slept, reluctant to meet her glance across the board as they ate.

“
I know not why I read it,” she hedged. “It just struck me.”

“
Marcus Aurelius believed that a spark of the divine resides in all men, and nothing can be further from the truth. As a minister’s wife, you should not read such things.”

“
Think you that I should close my mind to the thoughts of others? Marcus Aurelius had much good to say!”

“
So do the heathen Indians who dwell at our side, yet they are not counted among the sons of God. Aurelius said that philosophy and it alone had the power to guide and guard a man’s steps. And such a philosophy, Jocelyn, will doom a man’s soul to hell for eternity, and doomed also will be those who read such ideas.”

She let the book fall from her hand to the quilt that covered her.
“I cannot speak for Marcus Aurelius,” she whispered intently. “But I will speak for myself. My soul is not doomed, Thomas, nor is yours, though you have read Aurelius, too. Nor was my father’s, and he was a philosopher of great renown as well as one who loved God and his fellow man. In my father’s house I read Aurelius, and Ovid, and Euripides, and Aeschylus—yet, by grace, still I am accepted by God!”

“
You will not read such things here.”

Jocelyn managed a laugh.
“Unless God in his mercy sends John White to us soon, I will never have such books again! But the words of the great poets are hidden in my heart. Surely you have read them—”

He turned from her and bent over his books on the table.
“I wish to devote myself to scripture.”

“
But you have read Greek poetry.”

He lifted his head slightly, and Jocelyn knew his silence was an affirmative answer.

“
Then how can you deny the beauty of Aeschylus?” She sat up, engrossed by the memories that flooded her heart. “My father used to play-act with me. In one of my favorite scenes, I acted as one of the Furies, and my father played Orestes, who prayed for mercy as the Furies sang their binding song.”

“
‘Tis nothing but folly,” Thomas muttered, bending over his sermon. “Your father was but a foolish old man.”

Ignoring his remarks, Jocelyn closed her eyes and swayed gently with the beauty of the poetry and the memory of her eloquent father reading from the thick book.
As a child, she had memorized the powerful passage and played her part dramatically, swooping around her book-bound father as he tried not to smile.

She recited the words that came easily to her even now:

“Come then, link we our choral. If a man

can spread his hands and show they are clean,

no wrath of ours shall lurk for him.

Unscathed he walks through his life time.

But one like this man before us, with stained

hidden hands, and the guilt upon him,

shall find us beside him, as witnesses

of the truth, and we show clear in the end

to avenge the blood of the murdered.”

“Stop!” Thomas roared.

She blinked as he hurled his precious prayer book across the room, missing her head by inches.
“Such things are of the Devil!” The prayer book fell to the floor with a thud as Jocelyn stared at her husband in mute astonishment.

His face paled, and he opened his mouth as if to speak, but then abruptly turned and slammed the door as he stormed outside.

The creaking of the latch woke her a few hours later, and she heard him quietly reenter the house.
He shed his doublet, removed his boots and leggings, and slid carefully beneath the blankets, trying, she knew, not to wake her.

She did not stir, but kept her back to him. Why had God brought her to such an unreasonable man? In the beginning Thomas had seemed a towering rock of strength. Now his solid qualities served only to frustrate and confound her. He was stubborn, immovable, implacable, and totally without understanding. She wondered if even a tiny spark of compassion existed in his soul.

So why did her heart break each time she looked at him?

For a long time they lay awake, their backs to each other, neither moving, neither speaking, until the dawn came and the baby stirred them with her crying.

thirty-six

J
ohn White felt the bow of the
Ark Royal
rise under his feet as the sleek flagship of Her Majesty’s Navy headed out to sea. A marvel of engineering, Sir Walter Raleigh had built the magnificent galleon, then presented it to the Queen. The ship had two gun decks, a double forecastle, a quarterdeck, half deck, and, above the half deck furthest aft, a poop deck. The innovative gallery, a balcony mastered by Raleigh’s designer, Matthew Baker, ran forward from the stern on either side of the half deck.

All in all, the
Ark Royal
was a ship built for conquerors, with decks aplenty for captains and admirals to supervise the progress of a battle at sea. A twinge of bitter regret struck White as he thought of Raleigh’s dedication to the splendid vessel, and he resolutely turned his face out to sea so that none aboard the ship might guess at his thoughts.
Raleigh could have devoted the funds invested in this ship to rescue my daughter
, he thought, cynicism battering his brain.
But no, he chose instead to buy greater favor with the Queen.

The low and elegant galleon moved confidently across the surface of the waters. From his position on the poop deck, Lord Charles Howard of Effingham, chief in command against the approaching Spanish Armada, shouted orders to his scurrying crew. Howard had agreed to allow White on board as a favor to Raleigh, and probably had no idea that White waited for the outcome of the sea battle for more than patriotic reasons. If the British faced defeat, White knew his chances for returning to Roanoke would evaporate like smoke from a ship
’s cannon. But if the English fleet decimated the Spanish Armada, the seas would once again be safe for exploration.

“God in Heaven,” White prayed quietly, squinting into the July sun as Portsmouth slipped away beside him, “the holy scriptures say you have spread out the heavens and tread upon the waves of the deep. You divide the ocean with your power, you have dominion from sea to sea. Trusting in your power, I trust that you will return me to Roanoke. May victory be ours in this battle, and may your grace provide me with a safe passage to my friends and loved ones.”

After two years of preparation to outfit the greatest armada the world had ever seen, Philip II of Spain awarded command to the massive fleet to the Duke of Medina-Sidonia, Alonzo Perez de Guzmán. Philip’s ambition extended to more than victory at sea. Inspired by the exhortations of his priests, he determined to conquer the rebellious island of England and silence forever the voice of heretical Protestantism.

Philip
’s plan, carefully orchestrated over the past months and finally ready for implementation, involved a two-pronged attack. The Armada would break the lines of English resistance at sea, and once the English navy could no longer protect the country’s vulnerable shores, an army of thirty thousand Spanish soldiers waiting with the Duke of Parma in the Netherlands would cross the channel and invade the shores of England.

On the nineteenth day of July 1588, Philip cracked his knuckles in nervous anticipation as Medina-Sidonia bowed before him. He quickly pressed his hand upon the admiral
’s head to impart a royal blessing. Beside him, the King’s counselor murmured a Latin prayer, and Medina-Sidonia lifted his head and smiled in confident pleasure.

“We have been thwarted before, my King,” he said, referring to the disastrous attempt to launch the attack three months earlier. The fleet had been scattered by a gale and required nearly a month to refit and regroup in Coruña. “But now, Sire, we are ready.”

Philip lifted his hand in a silent, regal salute, and Medina-Sidonia swirled away to board his ship. When the room had cleared of all but his counselors, Philip rose from his throne and went to the window. The harbor teemed with life; one hundred and thirty-one great and small warships awaited their commands, and upon their decks eight thousand sailors and nineteen thousand soldiers had armed themselves for battle. It was the most impressive fleet ever assembled in history; and his Armada would surely be invincible.

Philip
’s counselor pointed with a long finger to the admiral’s ship. The sails of Medina-Sidonia’s galleon snapped and filled first, then the harbor bloomed with canvas. Philip glanced toward his Father Confessor for a sign of approval, but the priest crossed himself in prayer and made no promises.

The booming of cannon from a lookout ship to the south brought the activity aboard the
Ark Royal
to a momentary halt. “So it begins, then,” John White muttered, scanning the southwestern horizon. Lord Charles Howard glanced up toward the seaman in the crow’s nest. “Ahoy, Captain!” the seaman cried out, pointing southward. “Hither come fifty, mayhap sixty ships. I can’t count them, sir!”

Howard snapped his attention to the officers standing near him. “Time to show the poxy Spaniards what we Englishmen are made of,” he said, nodding stiffly. “Every man to his station and ease up the main sheets. We will not let them one league nearer to England than they are right now!”

White felt his mouth go dry as his heart began to pound. Many of Elizabeth’s courtiers had brashly predicted that Philip would never actually dare to attack. Yet Spanish galleons had claimed the horizon, and the armored fleet was sailing inexorably up the English Channel toward them.

God in heaven, what would this day bring?

Amid the explosions of gunpowder and the furious splash of cannon fire, the English fleet got to windward of Medina-Sidonia’s Armada. With the wind full in their sails, the English pressed their smaller, more agile ships away from the Spanish, while their superior guns battered the Armada mercilessly. The English cheered every time a Spanish ship was struck, but on the flotilla came, a seemingly impenetrable cluster of towered ships that moved relentlessly up the Channel.

In a tight formation, the Armada moved as a gigantic shark through the water, and only the ships on the perimeter were exposed to direct contact with English guns. In three major engagements the English were unable to do major damage, but then the
Ark Royal
and her fellows drove the Spanish fleet into the Calias roadstead where the Spanish ships anchored. The roadstead was not as enclosed and protected as a harbor, but Howard did not dare attack the Spanish while they lay at anchor off the coast of France. He determined to wait, a clever, sly mouse awaiting his confrontation with an arrogant, clumsy cat.

On the evening of July twenty-eighth, John White stood at the deck of the
Ark Royal
as her sailors worked in silent darkness. Eight small shallops, collected from the
Royal
and several other English vessels, were tied together in a single line and filled with rotting, oil-soaked canvas. At Howard’s command, the shallops were towed by a crew of seamen to the mouth of the Calias roadstead, then ignited.

The pregnant silence of the night erupted into cheers as the tide propelled the fire ships toward the sleeping Spanish fleet. White heard the long, slow chuckle of Lord Charles from the deck above as the burning shallops drifted to the immobile Armada and pandemonium ensued. Unclothed men, rousted from sleep, frantically climbed the tall ships
’ rigging, and Spanish sails jerked upward from yardarms atop the masts as cables were cut and anchors abandoned.

One burning boat nudged a sizeable warship, and a stream of sparks flew up into the night and ignited oil on the deck. Within seconds, huge tongues of flames leaped into the air and men scrambled to vault overboard in the fire-tinted darkness.

Aboard the
Ark Royal
, Lord Charles Howard stopped laughing and gave the order to make sail in pursuit of the frantic Spanish.

Had a violent storm not sprung Howard
’s carefully set trap, the entire Armada might have been captured. But heavy winds and bucking waves allowed many of the enemy vessels to escape. The English pursued the Spanish warships into the early morning hours. As soon as dawn rendered it possible to positively identify targets, the boom of cannon resounded over the waters and a fierce gun battle ensued. By keeping his ships out of range of the floating Spanish arsenals and using his long-range guns effectively, Lord Charles managed to put five principal ships out of action. Aboard other English ships, Howard’s officers utilized the maneuverability of the low English galleons to outrun the hulking Spanish vessels that dared to pursue them. By sailing quickly and turning at the last moment, English captains ran two of the Spanish ships aground.

John White saw Lord Charles kiss his fingers in delight when a sudden change in the wind threatened to drive the Spanish fleet onto the Ruytingen Shoals, but the wind shifted again, and Medina-Sidonia escaped in a headlong flight to the North Sea. The
Ark Royal
and a dozen other ships followed the remnant of the disabled Armada as far as the Firth of Forth, then broke off their pursuit outside the Scottish bay.

Exultant in victory, Lord Charles clapped White on the back and invited him to the captain
’s cabin for a celebratory drink. White accepted, his own heart filled with gratitude to this clever captain. As they lifted their glasses of ale in a celebratory toast, the bosun burst into the tiny cabin, a list in his hand. “In ten days,” the officer said, barely suppressing a cocky grin, “our enemy has lost sixty-three ships.”

“And we?” Howard asked, turning to the bosun. “Tell the good governor how many ships we have lost.”

“None,” the officer replied.

While Lord Charles pompously propped his boots on the desk and lifted his mug to toast his victory, White breathed a silent prayer of thanks. If Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth had lost none of her galleons and won the naval battle of the century, there was no reason a fleet would not be soon available for renewed journeys to America.

“The Honorable John White, Governor to Her Majesty’s Colony at Roanoke Island, Virginia, begs an audience with the Queen of England, Wales, and Ireland.”

White felt his stomach tighten as his name echoed through the throne room of Richmond Palace, but he stepped obediently forward, drawn by the sight of the diminutive red-haired queen in the chair by the window. The circle of courtiers and counselors inclined their heads in polite interest as he approached; only the eyes of the queen remained aloof.

Before her, he knelt on one knee and bowed his head. “Your Majesty. I have a boon to ask of thee.”

“Rise, John White.”

He felt as awkward as a schoolboy before her, the virgin queen who had just conquered the world. Her dark blue eyes were upon him now, as clever as a terrier’s. Her delicate hand paused on a bauble that hung from a gold chain about her neck, and she lifted her chin slightly. “What would you ask of us?”

“Permission to sail.” He should not have been so blunt; he felt the dark, disapproving glance of Sir Walter Raleigh fall upon him. Elizabeth had to be courted, he had been told, she must be flattered and warmed to the subject at hand. Those who succeeded with her acknowledged her beauty, purity, devotion to God and the reformation of the church . . .

But John White was no diplomat. “Your Majesty, last year I left my daughter and granddaughter on the shores of Virginia in order to hasten here and accrue supplies for the English venture at Roanoke. The colonists are depending upon me, and I must return to them shortly. I pray you, I beseech you, let me return to them with a fleet of well-supplied ships.”