Tidewater: A Novel of Pocahontas and the Jamestown Colony Read online

  Pocahontas slowed, stopped, and braced her hands against her trembling knees as she panted on the edge of the clearing. A man with a spear followed on the heels of the werowance. The man took up his post outside the door, standing very straight and still. His eyes held a fierce glare, though its intensity was diminished somewhat by his ears, which stuck out from his head like a grouse’s showy feather tufts.

  Pocahontas strode toward the guard. As she drew closer, she could tell he was young, though she did not recognize him. This was not unusual; boys and girls kept to their own work, and Werowocomoco was a large town. Unlike Matachanna, Pocahontas had found little amusement in watching the boys’ dances at the nightly fires, and so she did not know all the youth of the village on sight. She guessed the guard’s age at no more than fifteen, barely old enough to shave a few wispy hairs from his chin. His arms and chest bore the remnants of bruises, not more than two weeks old by the look of them. The guard was fresh from his huskanaw, a months-long trial in the wilderness that ushered boys into manhood—and killed those too weak to survive the brutal ordeal. She must be careful with this one. When the huskanaw was still vivid in a man’s memory, his patience was short and he was quick to do violence.

  “A good evening,” she said politely, pressing one hand to her heart.

  The guard glared.

  “I have been called to serve the werowances bread and water. You must let me enter.”

  The guard snorted. “All the women who are serving went inside already. Run back to your ama, little girl. You have no place here.”

  Her spine went rigid with indignation. “My ama is not in Werowocomoco, for I am a daughter of Powhatan.”

  He gave an amused half smile. “You and half the females in Tsenacomoco. Go dig a privy pit. I’m not stupid. You want to spy on men’s business so you can carry tales back to your gossip circle.”

  Pocahontas lifted the necklace Matachanna had given her. “Look: these aren’t shell beads. They’re real pearls. If I were an ordinary daughter of Powhatan, would I be wearing pearls? Now step aside! My father has called me, and I must serve his guests.”

  The guard said nothing. He stared into the woods, as unmoved by her words as if she were a mosquito buzzing around his big ears. Pocahontas kicked a pebble at him before remembering he was a man still aching from his huskanaw. He lurched at her as if he meant to grab her, and she bolted into the undergrowth, heart pounding. She kept running until the great house was well distant. Then she turned and swung wide through the trees, sliding past dark trunks, edging around the stiff branches of sapling thickets. She circled back through the gardens of Werowocomoco until she found the rear wall of Powhatan’s great house.

  Pocahontas crept from the brush and pressed herself against the outside wall. The smooth, well-cured bark brushed her cheek. She could smell the pungent smoke of tobacco and the animal reek of damp fur. Pocahontas moved silently along the perimeter of the great house, searching with her eyes and fingers until she found an old strip of bark whose edge curled slightly. She paused to listen to the low hum of conversation, gauging the distance between herself and the place inside where the werowances gathered. Then she slid her fingers beneath the edge of the strip and pried it slowly up. Several other strips came loose with it, making a gap just large enough to squeeze through. She held her breath until she was inside. The bark left stinging scrapes on her shoulders and legs. She found herself beneath the frame of a bed, well hidden in shadow and under fur. She lay flat on her belly and counted silently until the sting of her abrasions abated.

  She watched several women’s feet cross in front of her. They crossed and recrossed, paused, and turned. Beyond the women, in the center of the great house, the hunched figures of men were ranged in a circle around a well-fed heart fire. They were backlit, cast in stark silhouette by bright leaping flames. The chiefs passed a clay pipe among them, and as each exhaled his puff of tobacco, the black shape of his neighbor distorted and rippled through the smoke.

  When the women had moved away, Pocahontas slithered from under the bed. A long-necked gourd rested beside a basket of round dumplings; she seized the gourd and hefted it to her hip. It was full of water and was heavier than she expected. She staggered a few steps before finding her balance. Water splashed over the rim and ran down her chest. Pocahontas turned quickly to brush herself against the furs piled on the bed, drying away the worst of it.

  “You there,” a woman’s voice called, low and urgent, “bring the water. Be quick now!”

  Pocahontas went where she was directed, stepping carefully between the werowances in their solemn circle, bending to trickle water into their oyster- or turtle-shell bowls, her face demurely downcast until she withdrew again into the shadows. “Keep a sharp eye on the chiefs, girl,” one of Powhatan’s wives admonished, her voice a hiss in Pocahontas’s ear. “Do not let any bowl run dry.”

  Powhatan sat above his guests, couched on his massive platform bed. He was a man well beyond his prime, but not beyond his majesty. The years had begun to drain away some of his blocky strength, and time had blurred the edges of his tattoos, yet the firmness of his chest and shoulders was still evident. Like all men, the right side of his scalp was clean-shaven, but where the younger werowances had bound their left-sided locks in intricate knotted braids bristling with feathers and animal teeth, with long, ornamental copper pins that glinted in the firelight, Powhatan let his hair fall loose. It draped across his left shoulder like a curtain of misty rain. A patch of long, wiry hairs sprouted from his chin and upper lip. Powhatan had never been fond of the ordeal of the razor-shells, and now, in his old age, he reckoned he need not submit to any ritual of hygiene that disagreed with him. After all, he was the mamanatowick, the Chief of Chiefs, architect of the greatest unity Tsenacomoco had ever seen. He answered to no one but the Okeus, and evidently the god was willing to tolerate Powhatan’s beard.

  Pocahontas, half concealed by shadow, the heavy gourd pressing painfully into her hip, smiled at the sight of her father. She might have edged closer to fill his cup, but one of the pretty young wives reclining on the bed behind him uncurled her lithe body and tended to Powhatan’s cup herself. Pocahontas frowned at the lost opportunity. Then Powhatan spoke, and she forgot everything but his words.

  “Brothers,” he said, his voice dry and deep, “most of you know already why I have summoned you to Werowocomoco. The rumors from the northern tribes are true. The tassantassas have returned.”

  It was good that the circle of chiefs hummed with murmurs, for Pocahontas could not stifle a gasp. A curious sensation knotted in her stomach, part fear, part excitement. All the children of the Real People knew of the tassantassas, pale-skinned men like the Frawh-say, those trappers who traded blue beads to the Massawomecks. Tassantassas were as small and mean-spirited as weasels. All of them, even the young ones, had beards like old men, but theirs were so thick and bushy that only their tiny blue eyes peered out above noses longer and more hooked than eagles’ beaks. They smelled stronger than a deer-wallow in the rutting season. Worst of all, they took children onto their huge, white-winged boats and sailed away with them. Most of the abducted children were never seen again, though a few had found their way home, bringing stories of a white mamanatowick who was never seen by his subjects but demanded copious tribute of every type of shiny ore that could be dug from the earth or panned from the streams.

  “We are here today,” Powhatan went on, “to come to a consensus. It will please me to see all the Real People approach these white men in the same way. Let us be united, one People, as we face the tassantassas. Let us decide together whether we will drive them out”—a few men in the circle shouted their approval—“or make of them allies against our enemies to the west.”

  At the suggestion of an alliance, several men raised their voices in a cheer.

  Powhatan leaned back; a deep umber shadow descended across his face. The circle of werowances rumbled
with discussion. Pocahontas glanced from one chief’s face to another, straining to catch their words. At last one man raised his palm, and the others quieted. It was Chopoke, the werowance of Mattaponi.

  “These people are too dangerous,” the chief said. “We all remember how they came before, stealing children from our villages. What kind of a people take children from their mothers? I already know the answer to that question: they are not people at all. They are demons. We should not allow them to remain. Drive them back across the sea to their homeland. We don’t want them here! We have no use for them.”

  The next man to speak was Opechancanough, the uncle who had brought Pocahontas the kestrel-foot ornament. His great stature and bold, square face marked him as a brother of Powhatan, though he was younger by some ten or twelve years, and the slow creep of age had not yet settled on him. It had been more than a year since Pocahontas had seen her uncle last. He lifted his face to the firelight, and even at a distance Pocahontas was struck by the emotion that hung over his eyes like a ceremonial veil. She could not put a name to the strange intensity in his stare. There was something of rage in it, of loss and insecurity. There was a woundedness that was still brash and swaggering. Young though she was, Pocahontas sensed that this was a pain peculiar to a man. It put her in mind of a buck in rut, thrashing his antlers in the thicket, calling boldly to his does even while he limped with an arrow through his leg.

  “Of course we remember how the tassantassas came before,” said Opechancanough. The smoothness of his voice was at odds with the anger he wore like a bright feather mantle. “There is no doubt that they are a ruthless and unfathomable people. But they are people, not demons. We’ve killed them. We know they die when their blood is spilled. My friends, listen to me. There is much to be gained if we work with them.”

  “Never!” one of the men cried out.

  Opechancanough raised a hand for silence. “The tassantassas have goods—valuable goods. Many things we can use to make our lives easier. Think of it: more copper for our trade with other tribes. Swords. Tools for your wives’ gardens, and for digging tuckahoe roots out of the marshes. We can obtain these goods. We can make ourselves rich.”

  Chopoke’s lean face hardened in a sour glare. “What have we to trade? They want nothing but our children, and all the copper in the world isn’t worth that.”

  “We have knowledge to trade. Knowledge of the other tribes. Knowledge of trade and travel routes. They have returned seeking something, or else why return at all? This is our land. We will know how to get whatever it is they want. That is what we will offer in trade: the secrets of our territories. But we are smarter than they are, my friends. When we have taken all the valuable goods from their hands, we will demand their service in trade.”

  “Service?”

  “They have swords. They have the terrible sticks they call guns, which roar like thunder and blast away flesh and bone. We will put these things to use for our own good, turn the tassantassas into a weapon. We will point that weapon first at the Massawomecks, take their land, and expand the domain of the Real People beyond the falls. And when we have conquered the Massawomecks, we will turn the tassantassas against all the rest.”

  Opossu-no-quonuske drained her turtle-shell bowl; Pocahontas scrambled forward to refill it. The heat of the fire struck her bare limbs and coaxed sweat from her skin. Or perhaps the sweat rose from the excitement of serving the werowansqua.

  Opossu-no-quonuske took no notice of the girl with the water gourd. She nodded in Opechancanough’s direction. “My brother is wise. We can tame these tassantassas to our hands. Yes, I know their weapons are terrible and their boats are swift and very large. So much the better, I say. Let us make the tassantassas’ strengths our own. You men who quail at the thought of the white men forget one simple fact: the tassantassas are not Real People.” She struck her chest with one tattooed fist. “In the end, they will amount to little more than dogs scrapping for bones. Like dogs, they can be trained to work for us. Do you agree with me? Or will you finally be forced to admit that a woman is braver than all the werowances put together?”

  Pocahontas slid back into the shadows as the circle burst out with good-natured laughter. The weight of the discussion’s intensity lifted for a heartbeat, and a breath of the werowances’ relief seemed to pass across her skin.

  Chopoke said, “No one doubts your bravery, Opossu-no-quonuske, nor the bravery of the Appamattuck. What we doubt is whether we can trust the tassantassas. I still maintain that creatures who take children away cannot ever be expected to behave like men. Or even like dogs.”

  Powhatan leaned forward, his sheet of silver hair glistening in the firelight. “Chopoke, I hear your words. Your concerns are well founded. Yet my brother and sister also speak wisely. What indeed has brought the tassantassas back to our land?” He paused. The logs on the heart fire popped; a column of sparks rose like red stars amid the smoke. At last Powhatan said slowly, “Could it be that the Okeus has brought them back?”

  The gathered chiefs let out a collective sigh, a gust of awe and fear.

  “Now I will tell you what I think,” Powhatan said. “I think we have been granted an opportunity. The time has come to push our boundary beyond the barrier of the falls. The Okeus means for the Real People to hold all the lands, even to the distant mountains. But we need better weapons if we are to accomplish such a task. The Okeus has brought those weapons to us. He has all but placed them in our hands.”

  “I do not believe it,” Chopoke said. His voice was nearly a shout, and several other men nodded, while others murmured in support of his dissent. “These white men are far too dangerous and ruthless to have come from our god. Our god is no fool.”

  “Neither is your mamanatowick.” Powhatan stared coldly down from the height of his bed until the circle relapsed into silence. “Before we commit to taming the white dogs, we must learn more about them. How many are there? What are their habits, their strengths, their weaknesses? I know they have come ashore in the territory of Paspahegh. Wowinchopunck!”

  The werowance of Paspahegh stiffened at the sound of his name. “I am here, Powhatan.” His voice was low and tense with quiet control. The sound reminded Pocahontas of a cougar ready to spring.

  “Where have they landed, exactly?”

  “On the bit of mud that extends into the river—the one separated from the land by a narrow neck.”

  “I know the place,” Powhatan said. “Barely more than a marsh.”

  Chopoke squinted into the firelight. “Why come ashore there? It makes no sense. There is no good land there, nowhere to plant a garden, no deer to hunt, barely any birds, except in late autumn . . . Do you not see? These beasts don’t think like men. And you propose to tame them? Hah.”

  Powhatan continued as if Chopoke had not spoken. “It is your land, so you will meet with the tassantassas, Wowinchopunck.”

  The chief of the Paspahegh nodded, eager and fierce.

  “Find out from them whatever you can. Count their numbers; that will be a place to start. And learn what their failings are. Learn how we can control them.”

  Pocahontas’s arms had begun to shake from the weight of her gourd. She bent and eased it to the ground. Firelight danced in the darkness, brilliant spots of violet and blue glaring against shadow. She blinked to clear the flaring afterimage from her vision, then squeezed her eyes tightly shut. Tassantassas. She turned the word over in her mind, feeling the strange cold weight of it. A perfect memory of the werowances was burned against her eyelids. With her eyes shut, she saw them as dark voids in the shape of familiar men, sitting very still against a fire that limned them in violent colors—the colors of war paint, of spilled blood. The colors of the sky, moments after the sun has set.

  SMITH

  May 1607

  The bundle of saplings fell from Smith’s shoulder with a clatter. He stared at them where they lay shivering in the
mud.

  Christ have mercy, but what good are a few twigs?

  Most of the men had worked industriously, expending effort and precious enthusiasm on a very civilized and very useless fence, the type one might find surrounding a proper English garden. Even some of the gentlemen had pitched in to erect this fine monument to inutility, soiling their hands alongside the rougher sort of man. The fence now stood nearly complete, more gap than barrier, encircling the tents of Jamestown like the bold black ring of a marksman’s target.

  Smith had suggested they build a palisade, solid and high. And because Smith suggested a palisade, Wingfield built a garden fence. For explanation, he’d made a few noises about the Virginia Company’s instructions, their strict admonishment to avoid stirring up trouble with the naturals. A fence, Wingfield had said, is a friendlier gesture than a palisade. A fence is neighborly. Even a savage can understand the difference between a fence and a palisade. But whatever Wingfield might say, Smith knew the fence now stood only to mock his own caution.

  Smith turned in a slow circle, staring. He was grateful to be out of the woods, where a hundred unseen eyes caused a curious pressing sensation on his skin. The tents of Jamestown squatted in orderly rows on a level expanse of grass, already trampled flat into the muddy earth. The natural clearing occupied a broad spit, thrust like a thumb into the river. The river was exceptionally wide here, and rose and fell slightly with the cycle of tides.

  From a stand of trees that bristled near the spit’s center came the ringing of axes. As Smith watched, one tree’s great canopy slowly tilted, paused as if making up its mind, and then crashed to the earth in a rush. A flight of waterfowl rose crying from a patch of salt bog. On the flat gray face of the river, the three ships rested with sails furled. St. George’s cross, crimson on a white field, flew from the mast of the Susan Constant. It snapped in the breeze, rolling like the shrug of a lazy man’s shoulder. A little shallop, carried from England piecemeal in the hull of one of the ships, had been assembled and stood at anchor closer to shore. Two rowing flats lay beached on the muddy strand.