The Maidenhead (21 page)

He whirled, loped down the hill in the direction of the sawmill. The muted noise, more like coughing, came again, from there at the edge of the James, where a millrace channeled the water into a stream that poured over the mill wheel.

The smell of freshly sawn wood and sawdust flurried in his nostrils. He glanced around to see only boards and planks, ripsaws and sash saws, the mill wheel’s water buckets. “Rose?" he called out with more hope in his voice than was in his heart.

A tow-headed tyke lifted his head from the wooden chute where water had run when the sluice gates were cranked open. Behind him, another boy’s head popped up. “Mom! Tis all right! ’Tis that man that was at the dance in Jamestown."

Like a fairy, Rose, cradling her baby, fluttered up from the mound of sawdust in the saw pit. Or was it gold dust?

He scrambled down into the pit and grabbed her and the child tightly against him. Her clear eyes, their lashes tipped with sawdust, stared up at him, searching. For what? “Ye came back,” she whispered.

“Aye. While I was gone I had time to think. I realized all my life I had been looking for something and I finally saw that I didn’t have anything. Until you."

Her lower lip trembled. “There is not just only me. There are the three boys. Four of us.”

Four! He rolled his eyes. Had he, Mad Dog, and everyone in this wilderness gone bloody crazy?

The wee one, little Jack, whimpered again. Jack shrugged and stared down into his Madonna’s lovely face. "Until you four."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Behind the church’s altar, Clarissa gathered into the folds of her voluminous skirts five motherless children she had rounded up and herded inside the church. Rolfe’s wife was dead. The same for the ironworkers’ and the husbandmen’s wives.

Two men grimly fired from the church’s sliding wooden sashes that could be opened on warm summer days. Old Clem's antiquated harquebus wouldn’t hit anything farther than ten yards. Rolfe had a flintlock pistol and a blunderbuss.

While the two men attempted to keep the Indians at bay, Patrick, his nightshirt only half tucked into his breeches, took turns loading the muzzles of their fowling pieces. He ramrodded round balls or buckshot, and, when required, a paper that held the explosive charge. Streaks of gunpowder painted his face like one of the Powhattan warriors.

Except they were determined to kill—and he refused to kill.

Did it have to come to this: kill or be killed? His faith in right and wrong was blending into a blurred gray line. Especially when he took time to glance back at Clarissa. Brave Clarissa, who had collected the frightened, abandoned children. She and the children were innocents. Why did they have to die?

His gaze ricocheted back to the window that faced the river. Beyond the straggling line of pines and just budding oaks, a dozen or so men off the
Maidenhead
were firing randomly at the all but invisible enemy. A dozen men against ten dozen or more Powhattans. The ship’s crew were outnumbered, and the Powhattans had the patience to wait out the siege.

A well-placed arrow zinged through the window. Its fiery tip quickly set a pew cushion ablaze. He grabbed the cushion and beat out the flame.

Hardly had he finished when he looked up to see Rolfe take a shot in the arm. He crossed to him. “Here, good friend, let me see if I can bandage—”

Rolfe waved him away. "Listen, Reverend Dartmouth, the savages are going to overrun us. Clem and I’ll create a diversion, while you take your wife and children and make a dash for the shoreline. If you can gain the ship—”

"A good idea, Rolfe, but I am staying here with you."

He began rolling back the man’s bloodstained sleeve, but the patriarch jerked his arm away. "Don’t you see, we’re running out of munitions. There’s nothing more you can do here. But you can help your wife shepherd the children to safety."

Rolfe made sense, yet to turn his back on the two men went against his grain.

As if to forestall further argument, Rolfe pressed his flintlock pistol into his hand. “Use it if you have to, Reverend." He nodded at Clarissa across the room. "You understand my meaning?"

Patrick swallowed hard. "God keep you and Clem in His hands, now and always."

He drew Clarissa aside and quietly explained the plan, all but the purpose of the pistol he now possessed.

Her violet eyes large, she only nodded. Then she assembled the children to her and said, “We’re going to play a game. A foot race from the side door to the ship there at the wharf. Master Rolfe and Clem are going to fire the starting shots, and then we see who can run the fastest. All right?’’

Sally, her chin quivering, asked the logical question. “What about the Indians out there?"

Patrick stooped down level with her and took her small chin in his hand. "They may decide to run the race also. In that case, you must trick them. You go where they can't. Under the brush. But you always keep running. You want to get to the boat first.”

That seemed to satisfy the redheaded youngster.

When Clem and Rolfe had loaded a final round, he nodded that he was ready.

The two men burst through the church's front door. They fired a volley toward the enemy-infested forest.

"Now!" Patrick said and herded his charges out through the side door.

Ahead of him, Clarissa ran with her skirt gathered in one hand and Rolfe’s toddler in her arm. Her comb came loose and her yellow hair tumbled free. They got halfway across the green before the Powhattans realized the deception. Howls of rage went up, then arrows and lances zephyred around them.

Patrick risked a glance back and saw that Rolfe was on his knees, as if in prayer. He had been pierced by two arrows. Old Clem tried to get off a shot and couldn’t. A hurled lance plowed into his back and emerged from his pot belly.

Three tomahawk-wielding savages darted from the forest to fall upon Clem and Rolfe. Four others, yelling bloodthirsty screams, charged on, their vicious gazes focused on their prey ahead of them.

The
Maidenhead’s
crew fired rounds of volleys at the pursuing Indians. And still they kept coming.

"Keep running!" he shouted at Clarissa and the children. Safety was only three score yards away.

Seemingly from out of nowhere, a war-painted buck lunged at Clarissa with a knife. At that same moment, Jarvis emerged from the tree line to intervene. So he had come to claim her. Patrick’s heart took its own arrow of pain.

Jarvis bravely brandished his rapier at the Indian. Clarissa screamed. Jarvis’s red-skinned opponent held the advantage. His knife could deal death without his ever coming within reach of the rapier.

"You cowardly bastard!" Jarvis hissed. "Fight me like a gentleman.”

The Indian flashed a murderous grin. He raised his hand, knife poised, a deadly projectile.

The knife, instead of hurtling forward, thudded harmlessly to the ground in synchronization with the flintlock’s ball that found its target. The startled warrior grabbed his chest.

Blood mingled with the black-powdered hole. His knees buckled. He toppled forward.

Clarissa’s horrified gaze flew from the dead warrior to Patrick.

“Great shot, old chap!” Jarvis said.

Patrick ignored the remark. He threw down the evil weapon and scooped up one of the tots. Grabbing Clarissa’s arm, he hurried her and the other two children on down the
hill
. Jarvis retreated with them, offering protection from the rear while at the tree-fringed shoreline a dozen armed crew members were providing protective cover with a barrage of grapeshot.

Once everyone had gained the shelter of the ship and the gangplank was raised, Elias felt it safe enough to order a cannon bombardment that sent the Powhattans fleeing.

Later, when Jack returned to take command, it was discovered that Modesty was gone, along with Arahathee and his braves—and the lien as well.

Relieved of his present responsibility, Patrick left Clarissa with Jarvis and sought out the ship’s bowels. He felt like Jonah in the whale’s belly. He couldn’t escape his Creator. There in the dank dark, he had to review the enormity of his action, now more than an hour old: the taking of another’s life.

Sitting on a coil of hemp amidst the ballast and cargo, he wrestled with his conscience. A brown rat served as an excellent companion, neither condemning nor offering empty words.

At last, Patrick realized what he must do.

He rose and made his way top deck. Jarvis was alone at the railing, watching the shoreline slip by as the caravel made its way upriver to Ant Hill. “You’re looking for your wife?"

“I expected to find her with you."

A curious look passed over the poet’s face. “She's with the children in the first mate’s quarters.”

When he went to turn away, Jarvis stopped him. "Reverend Dartmouth, I owe you an apology. You saved my life."

He could only nod. He no longer had all the answers.

He found Clarissa just leaving the cabin. At the sight of him, she held her finger to her lips and quietly shut the door behind her. "The children are sleeping." She gave a wry smile. "At last.”

The two of them stood alone in the dimly lit passageway. “Clarissa.” As never before, he was overcome with shame. His pomposity. His judgment of her as a spoiled and selfish aristocrat. In truth, she had proven herself a noble lady.

He dropped to his knees and pressed his lips against her fingertips, then looked up into her luminous eyes. "I see now just how unfit I am for you.”

Her brow knitted. "Because you have killed in the defense of others? Didn't David slay Goliath?"

"I have done that and more. Worse. I thought I deserved you . . . simply because I bought you for my wife. Jealousy, resentment, judgment— I entertained them all in my mind.”

She sank to her knees, her skirts gently billowing around them like waves. She rested her hand on his chest. "But in your heart you nurtured only love. Don’t you Puritans call marriage the Little Church within the Church? In marriage, every day you love, and every day you forgive. It is an ongoing sacrament—love and forgiveness."

He felt that until this moment he had been sleepwalking through life. “From the first moment I saw you, Clarissa, I wanted you. I laid eyes upon you and lusted after you."

She leaned into him and brushed her lips across his, then drew back with a soft smile curving her lips. "My dearest one, don't you know that the eyes are the scouts for the heart? Furthermore, I saw you at the marketplace long before you took note of me."

“You did?"

“Our home is a pile of ashes. We can rebuild it. But do you think you can plant that garden this time? One with primroses that border a path leading to a jack-in-the-pulpit. And may-haps a fairy slipper too?"

He took her sweet, slender body in his arms. "About that night I took your maidenhead. ..."

“Patrick, you great gawk, I gave it to you. As you gave me your innocence."

He thought her eyes were far more beautiful than any violet flower. "We have some planting to do, my love."

Chapter Nineteen

Two predominant thoughts played ring- around-the-rosie in Modesty’s mind while Arahathee’s canoe rapidly carried him, her, and Juana upriver to Ant Hill.

The first,
I’ll drive a stake through Mad Dog's heart while he sleeps!
  He deserved no less. To have wagered her as if she were a pile of shillings—or a bondservant. All her life, she had been worth nothing to no one.

Until now.

And then would come the second thought.

I’ve got the lien to Radcliff Manor! Silver candlesticks, servants, soft beds, and sapphires! They're all me own for the having. 
She bloody well deserved it all. Hadn’t she toiled like a workhorse all her life? And for what? Nothing.

Nothing, until she saw the rolled parchment with the king’s seal in Jack’s ship cabin—and Jack and that fellow Jarvis had left it for her taking.

For reassurance that she wasn’t dreaming, her fingers constantly crept to her laced stomacher, beneath which the folded document was hidden.

When the bluff of Ant Hill at last came into view, she stared with rounded eyes, her mouth open. Nothing stood atop the bluff. Not the cabin, nor the barn, nor the outbuildings. Even the small shoots of cornstalks were missing.

In silence, Arahathee and his braves beached their canoes. Scanning the clearing, the charred peach orchard, and the encircling forest, they warily climbed the winding path to the top of the knoll. Destruction and desolation greeted them.

“Oh, me God," she whispered.

Arahathee knelt and ran exploring fingers through the smoldering debris. Only the two stone chimneys gave evidence that the fragments, burnt beyond recognition, had once been a home.

Watching, Modesty cut her fingernails into her palms. Her stomach knotted. Her lungs couldn’t draw a breath. She had wanted to drive a stake through Mad Dog’s heart, true. But she wanted to be the one to do it, not someone else.

She closed her eyes and silently prayed to that God she had so long denied. All this time, she had thought she had been running from an indifferent, even a vengeful, God. It was the Church she had been running from—and had found God, instead.

She opened her eyes and asked the question she dreaded. “Is Mad Dog's . . . have you found his . . . his remains?”

Arahathee didn’t answer. He rose and, with three of his braves, set off down the hill in measured paces.

She almost called out for them to wait. She didn’t want to be left alone in the wilderness. Where would she go? What would she do? Without Mad Dog to bedevil, her life no longer had purpose.

Abruptly, Arahathee pivoted and returned to her. “Mad Dog has been taken captive."

She didn't realize she had been holding her breath. She expelled it in a little sob that was half relief, half fear. “By which of the Powhattan tribes?”

The Monacans’ werowance held up the red feather. “Itopatin.”

She understood. "Can you take me to his village?"

The Indian’s eyes shuttered over. “Werowances do not treat with women.”

"Itopatin will treat with me. I possess great magic that I can give him.”

Skepticism mingled with disdain in his oblique eyes. His shrug was fatalistic. "Come then."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Modesty couldn’t remember ever being so exhausted. Two days without sleep or food, constantly on the move, made her feel delirious. She tried to keep up with her guides, placing one foot in front of the other. Often she tripped. The Indians made no move to assist her to her feet. Even Juana seemed indefatigable.

Like a fool, a derisory court jester, Modesty kept following her guides—until the Monacan in front of her stopped stone still, as did the others of his clan.

Arahathee motioned for her to come forward to join him. "There,” he said, pointing to a hilltop crowned by a few scraggly pines and houses that looked like oblong haystacks from her viewpoint.

Life seemed as if it would go on forever, she thought, then suddenly you find yourself standing on the edge of a precipice and know that it can all be over in one second. That all was for naught.

She nodded. "Let’s go."

Juana folded her arms, signaling she would wait. Arahathee peeled off the beaded wampum belt that girded his loins, signaled to his braves, and set off.

The Powhattan houses were in the midst of gardens and fields. Closer up, the houses reminded her of arbors, with small young sprigs bowed and tied, and covered with tree bark. Smoke eddied from holes in the roofs’ centers.

Quarrelsome and toothless old squaws and bare-breasted women wearing beads and copper bracelets stopped in the act of weaving baskets or pounding corn to stare at the visitors. Children halted their games of tag to watch.

The men, their nostrils sporting small red feathers, deserted their fishing nets and their wrestling matches. They looked barbarous with their heads and shoulders painted red with the pocone root and some kind of animal oil.

Arahathee displayed to one of the Powhattan warriors his wampum belt that guaranteed safe conduct, and they were promptly led to a lodge larger than the others. An animal-skin flap was pulled back, and Modesty entered. Her eyes had to adjust to the darkness before she saw the fierce Indian sitting on a woven mat placed over a dais of logs.

Arahathee motioned for her to sit. Like the other three Indians, she sank to the ground, cross-legged. Arahathee began speaking. All this time, Itopatin never deigned to glance at her. But she watched him. About his thick neck, suspended by a leather cord, was a dried human hand.

A priest of some kind sat in the background, shaking a rattle, as if to ward off the evil spirits brought inside the lodge by the Powhattans' lifelong enemy, the white person.

At last, Arahathee finished his discourse. The old priest continued with his infernal music.

Then Itopatin spoke.

The smoke stung her eyes, but she sat immobile, waiting, listening to the strange, guttural words. Wasn’t anyone but her hot? The lodge was like a sweathouse. She felt feverish. She tried to keep her mind from drifting.

When Itopatin stopped speaking, Arahathee turned to her and translated as best he could into English. “Itopatin has said he first wants to see this magic you would give him. Only then will he consider trading Mad Dog for the magic.”

So he was here! "No. I first want to see Mad Dog. If he is alive, then I will consider trading my magic.” She hoped the pulse pounding at her throat did not betray her fear.

Arahathee relayed her message, and when he finished, Itopatin motioned to one of the warriors, who left the lodge at once. Then the werowance turned his ferret eyes on her. The scorn was gone from his ferocious visage. The cunning in his gaze dueled with that in hers. She refused to lower her eyes.

The parting of the entrance flap released her from the battle of wills. Mad Dog was shoved forward. He stumbled, fell to his knees just short of the fire pit. His hands were lashed together behind his bare back. Crimson stripes welted it. The fire’s red glow highlighted the knot at his temple and a swollen bottom lip crusted with dried blood.

He eyed Itopatin across the fire pit, then spat into it with contempt. The embers sizzled.

A muscle in Itopatin’s rigid jaw flicked, but he snapped something to Mad Dog.

At once, her husband swiveled in the direction of Arahathee and herself. “You turn up in the strangest places, wench.” His voice was a croak.

"I told yew I am a fairy.”

Itopatin spoke up, and Arahathee said, "The chief wants to see your magic now."

She turned away from Mad Dog and said. "Tell Itopatin I will need a pot of their war paint—the pocone root and the oil they mix with it."

When the items were fetched, she fished the folded parchments from between her breasts.

Mad Dog eyed her with curiosity mingled with suspicion. "What in the bloody hell is that?”

One of Itopatin’s braves backhanded him across the face for talking, and he reeled before he regained his balance.

Modesty smiled glumly at her husband. "The lien to Radcliff s property. Jack returned with it this morning.”

"Oh, my God," he groaned.

She spread out one of the parchments, printed side down, and anchored the curling ends of the clean side with four of the outer stones from the fire pit. When she plucked a feather from the oily braid of the nearest warrior, he rounded on her with his knife unsheathed. She stifled a scream.

Itopatin made a sign for the warrior to fall back.

She forced herself to relax, to steady her shaking hand. She dipped the feather’s quill into the pot of paint and began to draw. Fairies. Trolls. Elves. Leprechauns. Even the likeness of Powhattan himself. All in crimson. Her hand flew over the parchment. She had to work quickly— she didn’t want to stay in the village any longer than was necessary.

Itopatin watched intently. Everyone in the lodge did.

Finished with her drawings, she took the second parchment and laid its clean-side face down on the just-painted parchment. Selecting a smaller stone from the pit, she began rubbing all over the top parchment.

The wet-ink racket was one she had observed at London Bridge, one of the principal literary streets of the city where several well-known publishing houses were. There, too, most pamphlets and gazettes were produced.

A successful demonstration of the swindle depended upon the inked drawing still being wet. The trickster usually selected a child for his mark. A clean sheet of paper was placed over a newspaper drawing, rubbed all over with the magic pebble, and when peeled off an exact reproduction of the drawing in the newspaper appeared.

The child, seldom noticed that the drawing was in reverse. The magic pebble was then sold to the child for a price that depended upon what the greedy swindler felt the child could part with.

Modesty was hoping that Itopatin was both childlike enough not to notice the reversed drawings and that he was willing to part with her greedy price—Mad Dog.

With painful regret, she watched as the stone defaced the lien’s printed text. Gone was her hope of silver candlesticks, servants, a life of comfort.

Her heart pounding, she peeled off the top parchment. She fought back the giddy laughter that bubbled inside her. Her trick had worked. Itopatin’s ruthless effigy stared out of the parchment at its living image.

Words of amazement were muttered around the fire pit.

Mad Dog rolled his eyes. At the moment Modesty wanted nothing more than to box his ears.

Itopatin grunted, then asked a question, which Arahathee translated. “The werowance wants to know what can keep him from robbing you of your magic stone?"

She shrugged. "I give it the power. I can take it away. Tell him I want my man. I am leaving." She stood up to reinforce her statement, holding out the worthless stone. She could only hope her bravado was convincing.

Itopatin listened to Arahathee's explanation, stared at the drawings on the parchment, then at the stone. Finally he grunted his acquiescence.

Without looking back, she strode from the lodge. Surely Mad Dog and Arahathee and his warriors would have enough sense to follow her out. The sunlight blinded her. She risked a glance back. Yes, Mad Dog and the others were emerging from the lodge. Arahathee paused long enough to slice through the hemp cord that bound Mad Dog’s wrists.

She didn’t pause at all. She kept walking on down the hill, her legs as wobbly as a newborn’s. Only when she and the men were deep within the surrounding forest within sight of Juana did she stop and round on her startled husband. “Yew foul-hearted swine! Yew scurvy, blood-sucking—"

And then like some lily-livered maiden, she fainted.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

A ghostly image swirled in and out of Modesty’s vision. A dark angel? She felt as if she were floating. Had she died?

She last remembered sinking into oblivion, Mad Dog’s leonine head above her, his arms catching her. When the image coalesced into a solid form, her dark angel was her savage, her husband. "Where am I?"

"Sssh,” Mad Dog murmured, with a tenderness she had never heard in his voice. “You’re aboard the
Maidenhead
."

She grabbed his big hand with sudden anxiety. “The Indian massacre? The Reverend Dartmouth? Rose and the children? Walter? Jack? Clarissa?”

"They’re all aboard and safe. Except for Walter. And many more, including Radcliff. He burnt along with his estates. Apparently his business dealings with Opechancanough and Itopatin hadn’t guaranteed protection of his personal life and assets.”

She closed her eyes. “The others—they didn't stand a chance. It was so unexpected."

He had the grace to look ashamed.  “I might have been one of them, but for you.”

“Ahhh, but ye never wanted me.”

His eyes burned with a feverish intent.  “You see, my first wife had been weak, whining, a clinging vine. She took the easy way out and committed suicide. I judged all women by her. Your indomitable spirit and your noble determination all this time at Ant Hill proved to me how badly I had erred."