Serpent Never Sleeps (10 page)

That day Governor Gates began the building of a ship, which he named
Deliverance.
He called men together, including Francis Pearepoint's gentlemen, and explained how necessary it was for them, no matter how lacking their skills, to put a mighty effort into the building.

"We do not know if our fleet has arrived in Jamestown," he said, "and if it has, how many are fit for another voyage. We can't rely on Jamestown for any help at all. Without a ship we could be here for years, forever, stranded, helpless, forsaken."

Even more of the men wished to stay on the island than had in the beginning. The thought of starving in Jamestown or being scalped by Indians was less appealing than ever.

The governor now fully regretted the softness he had shown to Hopkins. He displayed his regret in the
way he bit off his words and fixed a contemptuous eye upon Francis Pearepoint, whom he regarded as the one most dedicated to his destruction.

He put Richard Frobisher, one of the ship's carpenters, in charge of the new ship.

Frobisher sent out a crew to dismantle the wreck and bring ashore every timber that could be used. He sent men into the woods to saw up the best cedars and shape them into planking. Others were set to work on the salvaged sails. After two days, the keel was laid and the
Deliverance
took shape, a bark half the size of the lost
Sea Venture.

Then a lone sail was sighted far in the west. Admiral Somers, who was out exploring the numerous islands, reported that it belonged to the pinnace, that Captain Ravens had not been able to pass through the tangled chain of reefs.

On the third afternoon, he told us that Ravens had made his way at last through the maze of reefs and was headed off into the western sea.

Although it would take two weeks or more for the pinnace to reach Jamestown and as long for a rescue ship to return, the Puritans and the others who were impatient to leave built a beacon fire on a mount they called St. David's Hill. The beacon was lit every night as a symbol of devotion.

The building of
Deliverance
went fast for a few days. Then the work slowed down. Sir Thomas thought the men were bone-lazy. To set an example,
when the bell rang for work he was at the ship in his old clothes, tools in hand, eager to undertake any task however menial.

His efforts failed. Those he thought shiftless were, in truth, a secret band of conspirators bent on delaying the work and destroying the ship if possible.

The day he learned of the conspiracy, he rounded up the ringleaders, six of them, who under duress admitted that they had planned to leave the camp and take one of the other islands for themselves. To grant their wish, the governor banished them to the farthest of the islands, all except the blacksmith and the shipwright, men whom he kept and put to work under threat of death.

It was a bad, disruptive time. The Reverend Bucke, whom everyone respected, got us together on the beach. It was a warm night, with a west wind, but black clouds and a tilted moon cast weird shadows on the gathering. A storm was in the offing. It seemed to suit our mood and the occasion.

After a short service, to which we responded in halting voices, the Reverend Bucke introduced Captain Newport, captain of the
Sea Venture.

"We have reached the point," the captain said, "where neighbor quarrels with neighbor, where turmoil exists instead of peace. How, I ask, if this parlous state continues, can we ever reach Jamestown? And if by God's good grace we ever do, how can we be of help? I was there at Jamestown two years ago. First
hand, I have seen its problems. They cannot be solved by this quarrelsome brood, be it one hundred fifty or one thousand fifty."

Lightning streaked the sky and rain poured down upon us. The Reverend Bucke shouted "Amen!" and we thoughtfully filed away.

Yet at this time, despite Newport's warnings, the governor and the admiral came to a falling out. They'd had small differences since the day we left Falmouth, more since the wreck. Now everything led to a lengthy argument and a parting.

Admiral Somers moved to the far end of the island and took with him twenty good workers, among them the square-jawed, square-wristed Tom Barlow, the young man I had talked to the night of St. Elmo's fire. Since I had taken notes and written letters for the admiral during the voyage, he asked me to join them.

The new camp was located on a pretty bay with a yellow cliff at one end and a stretch of white sand at the other end. Between them stretched a crescent of blue water so transparent that it seemed like air.

From my hut I looked across the bay to a small island covered with cedar trees not far from shore. To the east I could see the beacon fire they kept burning for Captain Ravens and his crew, for Anthony Foxcroft.

Admiral Somers had brought a boat with him, a small one taken from the wreck. He decided to make a chart of all the islands and the reefs, as well as a list
of the trees, flowers, and wildlife he encountered. Tom Barlow would help with the boat, and I would come along with pen and paper to put down things he told me to, in the bold handwriting he admired.

Starting in the northeast on the point where
Sea Venture
was wrecked, we went west and south around the crescent, a great fishhook of land. Admiral Somers counted a chain of nearly a hundred islands and islets, took careful sightings, and had me write everything down. We didn't go ashore to explore any of the islands; that would come later, he said, when the chart was finished.

Two weeks after we had begun the chart, a bad storm hit the island and we couldn't go out. When the storm passed, we found the bay strewn with palm fronds, seaweed, reefs of dead birds, and shoals of fish.

"It was like the storm that wrecked
Sea Venture,
" Tom Barlow said, "but not near so bad." He was thinking of Captain Ravens and Anthony Foxcroft. "Nothing to worry about much."

"I'm not worrying, Mr. Barlow."

"But you're quiet. And when you're quiet, you worry. Otherwise, you talk a lot."

Tom Barlow was rowing fast. We were trying to reach home before nightfall. Admiral Somers was looking at the chart, holding it up to catch the last of the sun. There was a bitter smell of smoke on the wind and the beacon fire flared up. Tom stopped rowing but kept his oar down. The boat turned back in a slow circle.

At first, when he dragged it out of the water, it looked like a patch of seaweed.

"Somebody's coat," he said, holding it up. "Likely belongs to one of the conspirators Sir Thomas banished. They're living over there on that island where the fire's burning."

I took the coat from him and knew as I touched it, as I saw on the breast, stitched in gold thread, the Foxcroft coat of arms, the crossed swords and lamb's head.

"Belongs to Anthony Foxcroft," Tom said. "He lost it overboard somehow. Easy to do in a longboat, everybody moving around, the boat bobbing..."

It was dark when we reached the shore. I took the coat and hung it away. It was possible that Anthony had lost the coat somehow, as Tom had said.

In the morning we went out again, but instead of rowing to the place where we had left off the day before, we went down the island toward the governor's camp. It made me suspicious.

The sun was hot and danced off the water. The beacon fire was dead. Wisps of pale smoke rose from the ashes. Men were standing around, and one of them held up a piece of wood, waved to us, and came down the beach to the water's edge.

The wood was splintered and no longer than the man's arm, but there were letters on it, carved deep and clear enough to read, the first six letters of the longboat's name.

"Foundered in the storm," Tom Barlow said.

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The admiral shook his head. "Before that—the wood's bleached white."

A small flame leaped out from the dead beacon fire. This smoke curled up from the ashes, then drifted away. Tom Barlow put the piece of wood down and took up the oars, and we went back along the island to where we had quit the night before.

Late in the morning of that day we found another piece of wreckage from Ravens' longboat. Near evening we found the boat's pointed stern.

The men no longer thought that Ravens and his crew could be alive. They had given up pretending that they were. They waited for me to say something. I glanced at the serpent ring and said nothing. I felt that at last the ring had failed me.

But later, as we silently went ashore, I remembered the king's words. He had said that the serpent ring would guard my life. My life, and no one else's life. Not even Anthony Foxcroft's life. But, and he had made this quite clear, the ring would not guard me from grief.

The building of
Deliverance,
the ship that was to carry us to Jamestown, had been dragging along despite the governor's best efforts. The day after the pieces of wood from the longboat were found, things quickly changed.

At dawn cannons went off at the far end of the island while we were eating breakfast. It was a summons from Sir Thomas Gates.

Drums were beating when we got to his camp. Everyone was gathered. Bugles called, and the Reverend Bucke prayed for a while. Then Sir Thomas strode out in his uniform, glittering with braid, and spoke for a short time.

I recall few of his words, except ones he kept repeating: "We owe a debt to these brave men."

Sir Thomas had a powerful voice, and his speech rang out through the camp, above the sound of the waves and the sad cries of the terns.

The governor asked us to work in the name of King James and the investors in London who had financed
the voyage and to honor Captain Ravens and his brave crew who had given their lives to reach the desperate people in Jamestown. His impassioned call was heard and heeded.

None of the hewers of trees, none of those with menial tasks, remained absent. In the following two weeks alone, more was accomplished than during the two months just passed. But as the weeks passed and the bark neared completion, as the bare ribs were planked with cedar and the decks with oak salvaged from
Sea Venture,
workers became restless again.

Some wandered off and joined our camp, where
Patience,
the pinnace Admiral Somers had started, was growing but at a slower pace, for the admiral himself was in no hurry to leave Bermuda. Like him, they dreaded the time, fast approaching, when they would be forced by Sir Thomas to leave the land of blue skies, sparkling seas, and abundance.

Francis Pearepoint's gentlemen left the governor's camp, one by one, so as not to cause suspicion. They went off to the west, to the last island in the chain, where they had discovered the wreck of a second Spanish galleon.

When no treasure was found, they moved to our island and made camp, not to work but to conspire. Since the conspirators outnumbered the loyalists, they came to believe that it would be possible to seize the cannons, the guns, the supplies and—at last—to murder Sir Thomas Gates. In the words of Admiral Somers, "'twas a devilish time."

If he himself was not a conspirator, the admiral still favored the cause. Pearepoint became the leader but carefully kept in the background while pushing one of his followers, Henry Paine, to the fore. The only one in our camp who stood up for the governor was Tom Barlow. But the only influence he had was on me, and I had none at all.

"Where do you stand?" he asked when the conspiracy had reached its height and Pearepoint was ready to move against the governor. "You seem not to care what happens."

"I don't."

"You're awfully anxious to get back to England."

"I am."

"Listen, Miss Lynn, remember that you put your name on a contract with the Adventurers of London. They paid your passage money to Jamestown. You owe them work and dutiful obedience."

"They took a chance, they gambled on me, and I nearly lost my life. The rest of my life, what is left of it, is mine. I owe the Adventurers nothing more."

"A lightsome way to look at a solemn promise, I must say, a contract made in good faith and duly signed."

"You talk like John Calvin, the preacher," I said angrily. "You look like him, too. You're a Calvinist, no doubt."

It was the night before the happening, and the conspirators, more than twenty of them, had eaten and
gone off to hold one of their secret talks, not trusting us.

In the firelight Tom Barlow did have a Calvinistic look, at least as I pictured Calvin from my brief readings—tall, thin, a high forehead, and, almost hidden beneath heavy brows, black eyes, not cold but darkly penetrating.

He liked dried turtle meat and had a piece of it in his mouth which he was talking around. "What's more," he said, "the colony at Jamestown is named for the king. Before we left Plymouth, His Majesty sent his blessings to our fleet by messenger, wishing it Godspeed. Is your desire to return to England the proper answer? Besides a contract with the Adventurers, you have one that's far more binding, a contract with His Majesty, King James of England."

The king's name, spoken in Tom Barlow's deep voice, hung accusingly on the night wind.

"What, what will you do?" Tom Barlow said. "Where do you stand? For Governor Gates or for Admiral Somers?"

"For the king!" I said. "Of course, for King James."

"Then you stand with Gates against Somers and the conspirators."

"If he is a conspirator, why is he building a boat to help us reach Jamestown? It's nearly finished."

"A ruse. You'll see an uprising soon."

"Does Governor Gates know he's in danger?"

"He's looking for trouble at any time. Ordered his
men to wear weapons during the day and to sleep with them at night. Only a few loyalists are left, but they're better armed than the conspirators."

"You're one of the few loyalists," I said. "What are you going to do if there's trouble?"

"You'll see."

His eyes glistened in the firelight. I had a strong feeling that much of what Governor Gates knew about our camp, its secret meetings, the plan to gather arms, the talk about setting up a new colony on Bermuda with Admiral Somers as its governor, he had learned straight from Tom Barlow.