Serpent Never Sleeps (6 page)

"I'll need to write letters whilst in Jamestown," he said. "Perhaps you can be of help. I write a hand scarcely to be read by anyone, even myself."

"And also, sir, I can help you write down your sermons. You will give many, I am sure."

"Two every day will be the order of things. But I do not write sermons down. They fly to my tongue like birds."

From his slashed brown doublet he fished a long listing, and I put my name to a contract.

"
Sea Venture
sails before noon tomorrow," he said. "Be on the quay at dawn. Bring only necessities—only what you can comfortably carry. We'll have one hundred and forty-nine aboard, one hundred and fifty counting you. Space is limited."

Space was more than limited. Soon after dawn I was taken aboard the
Sea Venture,
to the afterdeck and down a few narrow steps into a dungeon where
the roof was so low I had to stoop. I was given a space that measured no more than a stride in width and two strides in length. Not a bed or a bunk, mind you, but a sleeping place on the bare floor.

There was no one in the dungeon. Everyone was on deck in the fresh air—everyone save Anthony Foxcroft. For a few awful, tormenting hours he was nowhere to be seen. I'd have paced the deck if that were possible, but we were standing shoulder to shoulder in a place no larger than a pigpen. Somebody's beard was scraping my cheek.

Noon came. He was not in sight. Could the king's guards have captured him? I thought of going ashore, swimming ashore if need be. Then, as trumpets sounded from each of the seven ships and echoed across the bay, he appeared on the quay.

Taking his time, he sauntered down the steps, his black, wide-brimmed hat cocked on the side of his head, got into a waiting longboat, and was rowed to the ship. He came up the ladder, calling my name. He called thrice in a ringing voice. I did not answer.

"Where are you?" he shouted, alarmed, elbowing his way along the crowded deck.

I took off my hat and waved. He raised his sword and waved back. I heard him say, "You have no idea what you're..." He said more that I couldn't hear. Chains rattled, sails flapped, people shouted.

There were no waves in Plymouth Harbor, but the ship rocked anyway, gently up and down, back and forth. My stomach began to rock, too. I felt myself
grow pale. For a fleeting moment I thought of London and King James, of the life I might have led.

Anthony grasped my arm. He led me to the rail and told me to breathe out when the ship rose up and to breathe in when the ship sank down. In this way, he said, I would feel as though the ship weren't moving at all.

I did as I was told and felt somewhat better. At last I saw White Lamb Tavern, the cobbled streets, the tumbled, slant-roofed houses, slowly disappear. And behind us six other ships followed along in a line, like six fat ducks on a pond. Farther back, trailing along like goslings, were two little boats, pinnaces, with fluttering sails.

The sun was bright on the water—too bright—and the Reverend Bucke was halfway up a mast, giving the first of his many sermons in a powerful voice. My head spun and my stomach took a twisting turn.

I was seasick for a day and a night, flat on my back on the hard floor. Anthony brought me bowls of turnip soup and the Reverend Bucke tried to comfort me with pious talk about how noble I was to be going out to help the starving people in Jamestown. I was too sick to eat the soup or to care if the ship reached Virginia or hit a rock and sank.

The second day I felt better. Much better, when the ship put in at Falmouth, not far from Plymouth, and anchored for days in the calmest of waters, while it took on eight horses and a dozen pigs.

Just when we were ready to leave, as the sails were unfurled and the dripping anchors brought in, a boatload of men nosed out of the fog. Someone in a scarlet cloak cupped his hands and shouted to us. He wanted the ship to wait, but the sails were full and we were moving.

A sailor threw him a rope, which he grasped, and he was hauled on deck. The boatload of men, shaking their fists and howling insults, disappeared in the fog.

The man in the scarlet cloak was on the ship no
more than a second when he asked in a ringing voice for the fleet's commander, made his way over the crowded deck, flew up its ladder to the Great Cabin, and burst in upon Admiral Somers.

We could hear him shouting through the open door. He was John Fitzhugh, captain of the king's guards, sent by the king to arrest Anthony Foxcroft and to bring him forthwith to the Tower and justice.

Anthony and I were standing at the rail, close to the Great Cabin, but someone shut the door and we heard nothing else. It was a terrible moment. If Admiral Somers decided to turn back, Anthony would be given over to the captain of the guards and taken off the ship.

Anthony always carried a dagger. He had his hand on it now. But what could he do with it? If the ship turned back, it would be of no use to him. There was no way he could ever withstand a dozen armed guards.

We waited in silence. We rounded a low headland. This was the moment the admiral could change course and return to Falmouth. A strong wind struck us and put the ship on its beam. The door of the Great Cabin swung open. Admiral Somers stood looking back at the town, at the men in the rigging ready to trim sail.

I do not know whether it was because he had added the hours it would require to put Anthony ashore to the earlier delays and the confusion it would cause among the ships in our wake or because he simply
didn't believe John Fitzhugh, but his decision came quickly. He turned, closed the door behind him, and let us sail south, into the open sea.

Fitzhugh remained on board, and that night, while we were eating our supper, the admiral sent for Anthony.

Anthony didn't come back, though I waited for hours.

When I came on deck in the morning, the Reverend Bucke said that Admiral Somers wished a word with me. It seemed that Bucke had informed the admiral about my friendship with King James.

We climbed the steep ladder to the sterncastle, to the gilded door of the Great Cabin, and went into a paneled room of carved beams and Persian rugs. Admiral Somers sat at a desk under the stern window, where he had a view of the eight ships sailing along behind us. He was stout and pink-cheeked, and he spoke briskly.

"When last did you see His Majesty?" he asked me.

"Less than two weeks ago, sir, at Foxcroft where I live."

"I trust he was in good health."

"Excellent health, sir. And he's very active in hunting."

Admiral Somers appraised me with a glance. I was wearing my best dress—a trim, white ruff with a sky-blue skirt open down the front to reveal a crocus-colored petticoat. It was a pretty dress. Anthony liked it and had complimented me on it.

"Where do you sleep, young lady?" he asked.

"Below in the rear," I replied, then stopped. Tired of lubberly talk, Anthony had told me that what I called the front of the ship was not the front, but the bow, and the rear was not the rear, but the stern. I corrected myself, which pleased the admiral, and said, "Below in the stern, sir, next to the rudder."

"Are you comfortable there?"

"No, sir. I am very uncomfortable. I am also worried. I have another friend, one besides King James. His name is Anthony Foxcroft and he has disappeared. I haven't seen him since yesterday evening. Where could he be?"

The admiral stiffened in his chair. "He's locked away. The king has sent for him. Something about a murder."

"It wasn't a murder," I said. "I was there and saw it."

"Saw what?"

I took my time and told him exactly what I had seen, how the quarrel had begun and how it had ended. "It was Robert Carr's fault," I said. "And I am sure that the king didn't send for Anthony. Rather, it was Carr who sent for him—Robert Carr, his present favorite."

The admiral looked at the carved figures on the ceiling, at the ships in our wake, everywhere but at me.

"Anthony hasn't been seen since yesterday," I said. "Where is he? I must know, sir."

The admiral pointed to a small door in the paneled wall. It led, I discovered later, to a cubbyhole near the rudder, reached by the Great Cabin.

Admiral Somers smiled. "I have a surprise for you," he said, and he called an aide who showed me a cabin in an adjoining passageway.

"Do you like your new quarters?" he asked when I came back. "It's small but well appointed."

"Oh, yes. Very much."

The next morning I found my way through the small door Admiral Somers had pointed out to the cubbyhole near the rudder, where Anthony was locked behind a door with a small iron grill. It was too high for me to see through, and the noise of the rudder and the swishing seas was so loud that I had to shout Anthony's name three times before he heard me.

"I've talked to Admiral Somers," I shouted to him.

"What did he say?" Anthony shouted back.

"Nothing. But I'll talk to him again."

"Do. 'Tis an awful place they have here. I can barely turn around."

"I'll talk to Admiral Somers today."

"Good."

And that was all we said to each other.

I talked to Admiral Somers that day, but he was pleasantly evasive, more concerned about me than he was about Anthony. Once more he asked if I liked my cabin.

"Oh, yes, very much, sir," I replied, as I had the day before when he had asked me the same question.

And I did like it. It had a hammock, two leather buckets, and a small window. Besides, it was high above the commotion below—squealing pigs, neighing horses, and the incessant chatter of more than a hundred settlers cooped up like so many chickens.

I saw many things from my window during those bitter times when I was allowed to see Anthony only a few minutes of each day. Out of Falmouth, seas began to run. The captain of our ship, Christopher Newport, was forced to cut the rope fastened to the
Virginia,
the pinnace we were towing. I watched her turn about in the towering waves and head back to England.

Days later, early in the morning, I heard the gun-ports clang open, and I saw through the window two strange ships on the horizon. Word came from Captain Newport that they were Spanish privateers. If they sailed toward us, the ship's bell would ring three times, a signal for all the women to gather below decks. But the bells didn't ring. The privateers had compared their strength to ours.

On the thirty-first day, under a scorching sun, word came that plague had broken out in the
Lion
and the
Blessing,
two of the ships sailing in our wake. I saw bodies, wrapped in canvas, dropped into the sea. Rumor was that thirty-two had died during the hot weather, nearly half of them women and children.

The weather grew mild, the waves glassy as they followed us along. We were now well past the bulge of Africa and the Canary Islands, on the same route Christopher Columbus had taken more than a hundred years before, under the same sun and stars, driven by the same gentle winds.

It was the first time since we left Falmouth that the settlers were happy. Evenings they gathered on the main deck (the waist, as it was called), sang songs of home, and danced to flutes and drums. One night John Fitzhugh, Carr's man, recited a love poem he had written. I had avoided him throughout the voyage, and I did then as he received the plaudits of the crowd and came lumbering up—he was the size of a stump—to receive mine.

The mild weather did not last. Captain Newport changed course and we sailed north by west. The winds were confused, now blowing from the south, now from the east, at times not blowing at all. The sun was hot, but at night we saw no stars in the heavens. The sailors went about the deck, closing the open hatches, battening them down with canvas to keep out running waves. We were told by Captain Newport to see that all our possessions were well fastened.

The Reverend Bucke preached sermons every morning and night. On the twenty-third of July, after a starless night, the wind dying to a whisper, he preached at noon. Standing against the mizzenmast
with everyone gathered around him, he mopped his brow and offered the following prayer:

O Eternal God, who alone spreadest out the heavens and rulest the raging of the sea, we commend to Thy almighty protection Thy servants for whose preservation on the great deep our prayers are desired. Guard them, we beseech Thee, from the dangers of the sea and conduct them in safety to their haven in the New World.

With fearful thoughts people gazed at the yellow sky, at the sea, which was smooth as a woodland pond, at the sails hanging limp in the quiet air. But every one of us, I do believe, welcomed a change in the weather, even a storm.

After sixty long days under a scorching sun, the drinking water turned brackish. The sea biscuits, one of our staple foods, had gathered weevils. Half of the turnips, another of our staples, shriveled, and the rest went rotten. The whole ship stank. Noisome privies, rancid food, smoke from the rushlights, the smell of unwashed bodies, all combined in one powerful stench that clogged the nostrils and assailed the stomach.

In the silence that followed the Reverend Richard Bucke's prayer, I climbed the ladder and spoke to Admiral Somers.

"When the storm comes," I said, "please do not forget that Anthony Foxcroft is locked away in a cubbyhole."

"The safest place," the admiral said. "The very best. Foxcroft will be the last to drown."

This was gallows humor. The admiral couldn't be serious, but still it angered me. "King James is a friend of Countess Diana," I said. "He would never arrest her son for something that wasn't his fault. It's Robert Carr's arrogance, as I have said before and say again. 'Tis silly to keep Anthony confined. Where would he go if you unlocked him? Would he leave the ship and walk away?"

"You might speak to Governor Gates," the admiral said to be rid of me. Sir Thomas Gates was the appointed governor of Virginia. He had quarters in the sterncastle. He kept to himself and I had seen him only from a distance.

"I am in command of the fleet," the admiral continued, "but once we reach Virginia, which we shall do quite soon, the governor is in charge. Talk to him, Miss Lynn."