Poison in the Colony, page 11
She nods solemnly.
“She just got bit by a spider,” Alice says. “She’s going to be fine.”
I ruffle Alice’s hair. “You are so right,” I tell her. “I’m going to be just fine.”
At home Mum makes a poultice of herbs and spreads it on my swollen face. She mixes together tallow and melted beeswax, and while it is still warm, spreads it on my cracked lips. Then she makes me hot tea from more herbs and warms some porridge for me to eat. In a short time, I feel the poison leaving my body, and I am able to move without my arms and legs hurting.
Samuel and Da come back from their work, and even Bermuda comes to hear about my trial. I tell the story, and when I get to the part about me becoming a black cat, Alice bursts out laughing. Soon Katherine is giggling too, and then everyone joins in. The words that were so shocking and threatening in front of the General Court have now become a hilarious joke.
“That boy doesn’t know up from down,” Da says. “I won’t even bother to sue him for defamation of character. Better to put all of this behind us.”
I am relieved. I do not want to spend any more time in court.
* * *
. . .
I am walking to the well with the yoke across my shoulders and both buckets hanging. It is a sweltering summer day. As I approach the well, I see there are three boys and a commotion is going on. One of the boys is Charles, and the other two I have seen around.
“I didn’t drop it on purpose,” Charles snaps.
“No, you didn’t drop it—you threw it!”
“My da gave me that knife.” The smaller of the two boys is near tears.
“I’ll get it out,” Charles says with annoyance.
“How? It’s sunk.”
They lower the bucket, and Charles leans into the well, his whole upper body inside the narrow stone walls.
This is an opportunity I do not want to miss. I take my last few steps at a trot. I hold the yoke steady with my hands, swing the left end of the yoke back, and then throw it forward, smacking it, with its bucket, squarely into Charles’s derriere.
He yelps, grabs his behind, and pulls his head out of the well.
The other two boys erupt in laughter.
“That was for lying about me,” I say.
“Whoa, Charles, you got this pretty girl mad at you,” one of the boys says.
“She is not a pretty girl.” Charles spits out the words. He is beyond furious.
“Oh yes, she is,” says the other boy.
My cheeks flush, but I keep my focus on Charles. “Don’t ever lie about me again,” I say.
There is no hope of getting water now, so I turn and head back home. As I walk away I hear the boys teasing Charles about his “sweetheart.” From now on if he pays me any attention at all, they will think it is because he is sweet on me rather than because he despises me. My guess is, he will do his best to avoid me.
Twenty-Six
I WANT TO like Mr. George Thorpe. I want to believe that it is from a good place in his heart that he is planning this college for the Indian children. I’ve heard that one of the boys who went to England with Pocahontas ended up living with Mr. Thorpe there, and he adopted him as his own son. He taught the boy to read. He read the Bible, became a Christian, and was baptized with the Christian name Georgius. When Georgius died of English disease, Mr. Thorpe paid to have him buried properly in a church graveyard.
People are saying that now Mr. Thorpe wants to build this school in memory of Georgius, whom he loved so much. But why would he think that taking children away from their loving families is a good thing?
Mr. Thorpe says that our ways are better than native ways, and that their children should learn our ways. The children’s parents don’t agree, and Mr. Thorpe does not have a single student. But still, I have tried to understand him and like him. Then, one day, Mr. Thorpe does something that makes me hate him.
Since no one is allowed to write back to England about how hungry we are sometimes here, and since the Virginia Company advertises that our colony has “All the Deer, Fish, and Fowl you can eat,” it’s no wonder some noblemen arrive with their great mastiff dogs in tow. The dogs are supposed to help with the hunting, and they do, but I think they easily eat more than they help, since they are the size of small horses. A lot of people don’t like them because they say in winter, servants die of starvation while the noblemen’s dogs are well fed.
We have two mastiffs that live near us in James Town fort, Ulysses and Sheba. Katherine and Alice love them, and always want to pet them even though they have to reach up to pat these giants on the head. Ulysses and Sheba are gentle giants—unless they are provoked.
It is a cloudy day, threatening rain. I am walking with Alice and Katherine, holding their hands, heading to the chicken coop to pick up our ration of eggs. The girls spy Sheba and Ulysses and ask if they can go pet them.
But there is shouting and arguing. The dogs’ master is red-faced, sputtering. Another man is waving his arms and yelling something about an unfair price. People are gathered, watching—some are settlers and some are the natives who live among us.
Suddenly, the angry man takes a menacing step forward. Sheba lowers her head and bares her teeth. Ulysses growls, ready to spring. The shouting man is suddenly still. Either of these dogs could kill him with a single bite to the neck. The man backs up slowly, terrified.
My sisters have no sense. They just see the dogs and want to pet them now. They both wriggle their hands out of my grasp and go running, ducking between the onlookers. I rush after them, but people are in my way.
I’m too late. I watch with horror as Alice reaches toward Ulysses, and Katherine holds both hands up to Sheba. I scream, “No!”
The next thing I see is Ulysses licking Alice’s face. Sheba lifts a paw to shake hands with Katherine and knocks her over. Both girls are giggling.
I am trembling when I get to them. I grasp them each by the arm and drag them away. “Those dogs were angry,” I tell them sternly. “You can’t play with them until they calm down.”
Alice gives me a pout. “They’re not angry, they’re nice,” she says.
As people disperse to go about their business, I hear muttering about the “bad dogs” or the “good dogs.” Everybody has an opinion.
It is two days later that Mr. George Thorpe does the horrible thing. He hears that several of the native men who watched the incident are now afraid of Sheba and Ulysses. Mr. Thorpe is doing everything he can to convince the natives to send their children to his college. Does he really think that his next despicable act will sway anyone?
Mr. Thorpe holds a public hanging. The criminals? Sheba and Ulysses. They are hung for no other crime than love for their master. Of course, we do not go to watch. Katherine and Alice are heartbroken enough when we tell them that Sheba and Ulysses have died and gone to heaven. And I hope that if Mr. Thorpe somehow, someday, makes his way to heaven, that those two beautiful dogs bite him as soon as he arrives.
* * *
. . .
I carry a basket, on my way to pick blackberries, hoping to get there before the birds or the other settlers have eaten all the ripe ones. A thunderstorm has just swept through and the air feels scrubbed clean and shiny with sunlight.
I see the blackberry brambles from a distance. I also see that someone is already there picking. I hurry to get there more quickly, but when I am closer, I see that it is Samuel and Angela. I raise my hand, ready to call out a greeting, but I stop. Samuel picks a berry, then leans in close to Angela and slips the berry into her mouth. She tips her head up and he kisses her lips.
I wish I could feel happy, watching them in love. But all I feel is sadness, knowing that they will never be allowed to marry. Samuel suddenly thinks to look around and sees me. “So, we’ve been caught by the James Town guard, have we?” he calls out cheerily.
I march down the path to them, my basket swinging. When I get to them, all I can think of to say is “I won’t tell anyone.”
“Oh, I don’t think it’s any big secret,” Samuel says.
Angela is flustered, embarrassed. I want to tell her it’s all right, that I’m not judging her for being a married woman in love with someone else. How can she keep her heart closed when she knows she will never see her husband again?
“I should go,” she says, and picks up her own basket, empty of berries.
“We’ll help you fill your basket so you don’t get into trouble,” I say quickly, and take her basket from her.
We begin to pick, silently at first. But I am growing angrier by the second. Finally, I blurt out, “It’s not fair!”
They both look at me.
“God makes rules, and men make rules, and when men make rules that make it impossible to follow God’s rules, then who is to blame?!” I fix Angela with a stare. “Not you.” I point at her. “But they will blame you.” My voice catches in my throat. “They will say what you are doing is wrong.” I turn to Samuel. “And what if they say you have committed a crime? What if they decide to whip you, or hang you?” I wipe tears away with my fist.
Samuel puts an arm around me. “I have a plan,” he tells me. “It will be all right, Ginny.”
I shake my head hard. “There is no plan that can fix this,” I say. “She is married, and someone’s property, and no one will give you permission to marry.”
Angela quietly slips away. Samuel pulls me over to a fallen log and bids me to sit down with him.
“Just listen. Will you listen?” he asks.
I nod.
“Problem number one, she is a slave belonging to Captain and Mrs. Pierce. I have land now. I can grow tobacco, ship it back to England for a profit, and earn the money to buy her.”
I purse my lips. I’d never thought of him actually buying her.
“I figure it will take me two years to earn enough for her purchase price,” Samuel continues. “Even if I have to go hungry, I’ll skip the corn and plant every inch of my land in tobacco to make the most profit.”
I roll my eyes. “You won’t go hungry, because my mother will feed you.”
“Fair enough,” he says.
“But you want to marry her, not own her,” I say. “She is married and she is a Christian, so it is a Christian marriage. You’ll never know if her husband dies, so she will never be free to marry again.”
“What if it was not a Christian marriage?” he asks. “What if she was baptized after she was wed? John Rolfe was allowed to marry Pocahontas even though she was already married, because her marriage to Kocoum did not count in the eyes of the church.”
“Are you sure she was wed before she was baptized?” I ask.
“Are you sure she wasn’t?” he asks.
I blink at him. Angela was kidnapped by Portuguese slave traders, then stolen by English pirates, then sold. No one here knows anything about how her wedding ceremony was performed. It is a secret that will go with her to the grave, and that she can discuss with her Maker when the time comes.
I lift my face up to the sun. “I like your plan, Samuel Collier,” I say. “I like it very much.”
* * *
. . .
Samuel must have confided his plan to some of his friends, who in turn told it to their friends, because soon Samuel and Angela are the topic of gossip all over the fort. People normally go silent when they see me or anyone from my family, but one day at the well, I find Cecily and her friend Ester. They ignore me and keep on gossiping.
“So, he’ll buy her and own her. How romantic,” Cecily says.
Ester makes a face.
“And what if they do marry?” Cecily continues. “Their children will be mongrels.”
I slam my water buckets to the ground, nearly breaking them.
Cecily looks at me, startled. Then she goes back to calmly turning the crank on the well. “What’s the matter, Virginia?” she says. “Don’t you like hearing the truth?”
What I want to do is punch her. Instead, my mind flashes back to my fight with Charles, and my talk with Samuel. I take a deep breath. In my mind’s eye, I see myself pulling up a bucket of water and tossing it over the head of my fire-breathing dragon anger. Only then do I speak.
“I heard you are betrothed, are you not, Cecily?” I ask sweetly.
“Yes, to William,” she says.
“You wouldn’t want him to think you’re still pining away after Samuel, would you? I mean, if someone told William how much you still talk about Samuel, that might make him angry, don’t you think?”
Cecily’s face turns its signature bright red. She snatches her bucket off the hook. “I am not jealous, you little wench,” she snaps.
“I usually see William at the tar pits when I visit my friend Bermuda,” I say.
She narrows her eyes at me. “Don’t you dare say a word to him!”
“Maybe you should talk less if you don’t want your words to reach William,” I say.
I hook one of my buckets to the rope and let it down into the well. I hum and focus on my work.
“Come on, let’s go,” Cecily says. She pulls on Ester’s arm.
“I haven’t fetched my water yet,” Ester objects. But Cecily drags her away.
I hum louder, one of the Irish tunes the musicians play, as I crank up my full bucket of water.
Twenty-Seven
SUMMER PASSES AND Charles does not die of the summer flux. It is more evidence of my innocence because he certainly made me angry enough to curse him if I possibly could have.
Da can hardly wait for the tobacco harvest to be over so that he and Samuel can go back to Elizabeth City to work on clearing the land and building our houses. As he prepares to leave, Katherine and Alice set up whining and crying that they don’t want him to go.
“I’m building us a nice house,” he promises them.
“I don’t want a nice house,” Alice wails. “I want you to stay here in this house.”
“I have to clear our land for our farm,” Da says patiently.
“No fawm!” Katherine cries.
My mother and I look at each other over their heads. The little girls are doing what we wish we could do: cling to my father and beg him not to leave us.
My father picks up his weeping daughters and sets one on each knee.
“Look,” he says loudly, startling them into silence. “Look at me. Where am I, Alice?” he asks.
“Right here,” she says, and sniffs.
“Katherine, where is your da?”
“Here.” She points to his chest.
“Yes, I’m right here with you. So, stop crying.”
Alice lowers her face to the sleeve of his shirt and wipes her snotty nose on it. Da’s lecture seems to have satisfied them, because soon they are playing on the floor with their rag dolls, and Da is free to continue packing.
The next day, Da and Samuel leave for Elizabeth City while the girls are napping.
* * *
. . .
It begins almost as soon as my father leaves. I wake up with it in the morning and feel it as I lie down to go to sleep at night: dread. During the day when I am busy, the feeling fades into the background. But whenever I am quiet, it is there waiting for me, like a menacing storm in the distance, letting me know that somehow, some way, we are in danger.
If only Samuel were here, I’d be able to talk to him about it. I don’t want to worry my mother by telling her about this dread, or by admitting to her that the knowing is alive and well in me. I keep an extra-close watch on the girls whenever I am out of the house with them, and I refuse to take Alice with me outside the fort no matter how hard she begs.
One day in late January the weather turns warm as springtime. “If we had no calendar, I would think it was time to plant,” my mother says. We open the shutters, and the low winter sun streams into our cottage. “Go take Alice with you to fetch wash water from the river,” my mother tells me.
Katherine is sleeping, Alice has refused to nap, and I know my mother wants some peaceful time to work on her sewing. I can’t object. I can’t tell her I’m worried that there might be something out there to harm us. All I can do is agree and lift the yoke with buckets to my shoulders.
It’s so warm we don’t even bother to wrap our feet in rags. Alice chatters all the way to the river. Is it springtime yet? Is Da coming home tomorrow? If it’s still winter, then why is it so warm? When is Da coming home? When will it be spring? Why not now?
I answer her questions patiently, all the while glancing around us to make sure there is nothing out of the ordinary. At the river, I lower the yoke from my shoulders. The air is warm, but the water is frigid, so when I wade in to dunk my buckets, my feet hurt with cold.
Alice plays on the shore, jumping from rock to rock. I sit down near her to thaw my frozen feet in the sun. Alice is so happy to finally be out, it would be a shame to rush her back to our cottage. She begins to gather small stones and arrange them in a pile. We’ll stay just a little while longer, I tell myself. Mum will be glad for the quiet time.
I look out across the river at the line of trees on the other shore, and the gap in the trees where our laborers have felled them to clear land for a new plantation. I wonder what it must have looked like when Samuel and my father arrived on those first ships, when all the trees still stood proud and tall.
Now Alice is using her four-and-a-half-year-old strength to lift and move big rocks. Good, I think, maybe she’ll get tired and take a nap after all. The warmth and sun are making me sleepy, so I fold up my knees, rest my arms and head on them, and close my eyes.
The next thing I hear is Alice’s scream. I jump to my feet. The snake slithers away. There are two small holes on Alice’s leg already dripping blood. She is wailing in pain.
