Serpent Never Sleeps (16 page)

At sunset of the following day we came to Pastancie, a sizable Indian village set back from the river upon a low bluff, where supper fires were alight. Captain Argall instructed the crew to lower a longboat and called three of his officers to the deck.

"You were here with me before," he told them. "You have talked to Japazaws, the king of Pastancie. Talk to him again and tell him that I have reason to believe that Pocahontas lives in this kingdom. And I demand that he talk to his brother, King Patowomek, and tell him to deliver her up to me. Along with Ensign Swift, who was left here as a hostage, as well as a goodly burden of corn. Unless he acts promptly, I shall put him down as an enemy and treat him and his people accordingly."

On the voyage from Jamestown, Captain Argall had shown me measured courtesy, yet I gained the feeling that I would not be on the ship if Marshal Dale had not insisted. Furthermore, I gathered that he had no thought of using me to persuade Pocahontas to return to Jamestown. This accomplishment, this coup, he wished to bring about himself, without any help from me.

"I was sent here by Marshal Dale," I said before Argall had finished with his instructions. "To demand that King Patowomek deliver Pocahontas to you means
that she will be brought here against her will, as a captive. It's possible that the king will refuse your demands. In which case you will have a deadly enemy, and the prize you came for will have fled in terror."

Captain Argall, surprised by my outburst, strode to the rail and thought for a while.

He was not a ninny. He was probably having doubts about his strict demands on Patowomek. What if the king did refuse to deliver the girl? Would he have a bitter enemy on his hands? What if Pocahontas did flee in terror? And what would Marshal Dale say to him if he returned to Jamestown empty-handed?

He decided to meet me partway. He told the officers to make no demands upon the king and to escort Japazaws to the ship, leaving Ensign Swift behind.

They came back in a short time with Japazaws and his wife. She was a tall, handsome woman dressed in bleached deerhide and copper bangles and earrings. Japazaws was half her size and ugly, but with a winning smile that puckered his face from chin to forehead.

Captain Argall clasped him tightly, though Japazaws gleamed with grease, and said, "My brother, tell me truthfully, is the daughter of Powhatan among you?"

Japazaws smiled but did not answer. His wife, making a wild sound with the copper loops in her ears, nodded.

"Convey to the princess my warmest greetings,"
Captain Argall said, looking from one to the other, wisely addressing both of them.

Japazaws smiled again and his wife nodded. The captain was speaking English. I wondered if they understood any of it.

"And kindly ask the princess," he said, "if she will honor His Majesty's servants by having food with them on board His Majesty's ship some afternoon at her convenience."

Japazaws' wife made signs that she would give his words to the princess. They both lingered until Captain Argall gave each a gift of beads.

When three days passed and nothing was seen of them, Argall became anxious, then angry. He put the ship's crew on alert and primed the cannon. Although he said nothing to me, I concluded that the party for Pocahontas was a ruse. Once she was aboard the ship, he planned to seize her, quell her cries, and sail off for Jamestown. It was a foolish idea but I kept silent.

On the fifth day, Japazaws and his wife appeared with an interpreter. He spoke to Captain Argall in his native dialect, and the interpreter translated the words into Algonquian, which I passed on to Captain Argall as best I could.

"I gave your message to the Council of Elders," Japazaws said, smiling, puckering his face. "And they are talking together about Pocahontas."

Captain Argall had been pacing the deck, barely
holding back anger that had been simmering now for five anxious days. At the news that his message to Pocahontas had been turned over to a Council of Elders, he quit pacing.

"What has a gaggle of old men to do with the proud daughter of the mighty Powhatan?" he sputtered. "Is she a captive, a slave, a helpless toy, not allowed to make up her own mind, treated in such a humiliating fashion?"

A setting sun shimmered on the deck. Smoke drifted out from the village and settled around us.

Japazaws' wife was wearing a heavy robe trimmed with raccoon fur. She took it off and stood in her scanty shift, looking at Argall. She didn't wait for his outburst to be translated. She gauged the depths of his anger. She had already gauged his interest in the girl. He had come a long way to find her, and was not here just to talk.

She studied him over the edge of her turkey-feather fan. "The Elders will talk," she said. "Days will pass."

"How many days?" Captain Argall said.

"If they talk, the days of summer will pass."

Captain Argall grasped his beard in frustration. Visible over the edge of the fan, her black eyes slowly closed upon the scene. She opened them again and pointed to a bangle he wore around his neck. A large ruby clasped in the mouth of a leopard hung from a gold chain. After making a motion to her own neck, she pointed toward the village, then to the spot where she stood.

Her message was clear. For Argall's ruby and chain she would deliver Pocahontas to the ship.

"When?" the captain exclaimed.

She held up two fingers and pointed to the sun.

Still frustrated, preferring to send her packing and to rely instead upon his cannon, the captain nodded. Whereupon Japazaws smilingly pointed at the sword Argall wore. Argall slipped it from its scabbard. For a moment I thought he meant to run the Indian through, but he relented and passed the weapon over.

With necklace and sword, Japazaws and his wife left the ship and paddled happily away in the dusk, taking the interpreter with them.

From the village came cries of wonder and delight at their return. Fires leaped up, streaking the forest and the river; drums beat. We waited for the two days to pass. They passed but the village was silent. There was no sign of Japazaws, his wife, and the princess.

On the morning of the third day, Captain Argall called together the crew and the sixteen soldiers of the guard and laid plans for an attack upon the King Patowomek. The crew was to remain on the ship to man the cannon, to be ready if necessary to move out of danger. The guards were to slip ashore at midnight, attack the village of Pastancie, and seize the helpless quarry.

I objected to his plans in the same words and spirit as before, but Captain Argall turned a deaf ear to my pleadings. A violent rainstorm, which burst upon us at nightfall, sweeping away one of our small boats, did
what I was unable to do. It caused Captain Argall to delay the attack until the next night.

In the morning, before the bugler announced the day and the first breakfast fires showed in the village, I slipped away in a small boat tied to the ship.

The village of Pastancie sat back from a low bluff above the river. To reach it I followed a trail flooded with water from the night's storm. Below me the ship's crew was gathering on the deck, and Captain Argall stood in their midst. There was no sign that he knew I had left.

As I came to the head of the trail, I smelled smoke and cooking food and heard the sound of quiet voices. But as I approached the village, dogs began to bark. Then suddenly a sparsely clad group of warriors surrounded me. Their faces were painted with streaks of white and black. Down their legs ran red snakelike patterns. Weasel skins hung from their belts and they had long spears tufted with feathers.

A man carrying a battered gun spoke to me in Algonquian, most of which I understood, and at the same time made gestures, which I fully understood.

"You have come from Jamestown," he said, pointing down the Potomac River, toward Chesapeake Bay and beyond. "For two days I saw you coming. I understand you come in peace. But I do not see my friend, Quemo. Is Quemo dead?"

A hissing sound passed from one to another among his warriors. Spears rattled.

"Quemo," I said, "is on the ship."

"I have seen the ship, but not my friend Quemo."

"He is on the ship. The captain will bring him."

"When?"

"Soon."

The hissing sound grew louder.

"Today," I said with a gesture toward the sun.

"Why are you here?" the chieftain asked. "What do you wish?"

"I wish to talk to Pocahontas."

The chieftain gave me a sharp look. "I see no beads, no copper, no pans, no nothing."

It was foolish of me to come here without presents.

The chieftain glanced at his warriors, at each of them, and shrugged his shoulders in disgust.

"The captain has many presents," I said. "He will bring them."

"Today?"

"Today."

What if Captain Argall brought death instead of beads? I envisioned myself a hostage. I might be held for weeks, months, a year, perhaps.

The chieftain pointed down a crooked street, to the far end where a long house stood."King Japazaws," he said. "You will talk to him about Pocahontas."

He said something that I did not understand and bowed, but he was not happy. Huts lined both sides of the street that led to the long house. Pine fires were burning in front of the huts and smoke that stung the eyes made it hard to see.

Before we had gone far, a girl emerged from the pall of smoke and came quickly toward us. By the way she held her head, the curtain of black hair, I knew who it was. I greeted her in English and she answered me in English, speaking slowly, running her words together; yet I understood her, as I had before.

"I saw you from the bluff," she said. "You were on the ship. I waved to you. You did not wave back."

"Because I didn't see you," I said. "I would have waved. I came a long way to talk to you again."

She looted at me intently. Her eyes were as I remembered them—deep-set, wide apart, and very dark, neither friendly nor unfriendly. From the many rumors about her, I had decided that she was here on the Potomac to hide from her father's wrath. I had made up a message that he had forgiven her and that he begged his dearest child to return to his kingdom. This was a lie. Meeting her gaze, I could not tell it.

"What talk," she asked, "did you come with?"

I hesitated. I had come for one purpose. As quickly as possible, before Captain Argall could commit some rash act, I had to get her safely on the ship.

"You come to talk about the invitation?" she said,
and paused, searching for words, making a vague gesture.

"Yes, can you come?"

"The Elders talk, lots of talk."

"But you are a princess," I said. "The daughter of an emperor. You can do what you wish."

A light kindled in her eyes, as if she had forgotten who she was and suddenly realized that a princess did not wait for Elders to decide what she should or should not do.

By now we were surrounded by a mass of women, children, and yelping dogs. The men, likely, had armed themselves and gone off to guard the trail to the river. Captain Argall would have long since discovered I had gone. It would be clear to him that I was in the village. It would not be long before he gathered his soldiers and followed me.

"The ship, what is its name?" she asked.

"
Treasurer.
"

The word meant nothing to her.

"It is bigger than Captain Smith's ship," she said. "I walked on his ship." Her gaze wandered off, as though she were reliving a happier time. She smiled. "I would like to walk on this ship." Then she brightened, held up a finger, and pointed at the sun. "Tomorrow."

"Today is better," I said, aware that "tomorrow" in Indian fashion could mean a week. In that time there was no telling what Captain Argall, angered by the delay, might do. Again, fearing the worst, I told
her that any day, possibly tomorrow, the
Treasurer
might sail away.

I don't know that she understood me. She was silent for a while. Then she spoke to a woman standing nearby who left and quickly returned with a feathered cloak and a headdress of beads and fur.

It was a signal for a procession to leave the long house.

Behind musicians making an awful din and a group of old men whom I took to be the Council of Elders was Japazaws' tall wife and Japazaws running along beside her. The procession gathered us up, and to the tooting of horns and the beating of wooden clackers, we swept out of the village and down the trail. It was all done in such an orderly fashion that I began to wonder. Had Japazaws planned the procession? Had Pocahontas made up her mind to visit the ship before I even talked to her?

Halfway down the river trail we met Captain Argall and a band of soldiers dressed in armor and carrying weapons. It was an awkward moment. He took in the scene at a glance and ordered his troops to turn about.

We followed them to the river, where the soldiers aligned themselves in two rows, forming an aisle. Pocahontas, Japazaws, his wife, and their retainers passed through it regally and were helped into a longboat. We all were rowed to the ship.

It was a hot morning, with the sun slanting straight down and steam rising from the river. Captain Argall had an awning stretched over the foredeck for the
comfort of his guests. Jugs of a pink drink were served. Pocahontas took a sip of hers, made a wry face, walked to the rail, spat it into the river, and wandered off.

She stopped at the mainmast and looked up at the ladder that soared high overhead to the crow's nest. Remembering Captain Smith's descriptions of how she swung in the Jamestown trees, jumped the palisade walls, swam the wide James River, I half expected her to set off and climb the ladder. She did put a foot on the first rung, then turned away with a heavy sigh.

As she walked toward the stern, Japazaws jumped to his feet and pursued her. Climbing the steps of the sterncastle, they were lost to view. At once Japazaws' wife confronted Captain Argall.

She wore his ruby and chain. One of the crew passed by at this moment with a copper kettle. She pointed at this and made a motion, a quick jab of her thumb, toward the shore. Her signs were clear. They had completed their part of the bargain. They had delivered Pocahontas to the ship. They wished to be gone.