Poison in the Colony, page 16
“Well, that should convince him to send all the native children to live at Mr. Thorpe’s school,” Mum says sarcastically.
“I know, it’s ridiculous,” Da says. “But what can we do? The Virginia Company officials know almost nothing of life here, and yet they come up with plans and send people to carry them out. All we can do is follow orders.”
“I don’t like it when their plans put us in danger by angering the natives,” Mum says.
“Neither do I,” Da says. “Their plans are so often like poison to our relationship with the natives.”
Poison. It is more deadly than the poison of my spider bite or of my sister’s snakebite. It is even more deadly than the water hemlock Chief Opechancanough wanted to use against us. The poison is now seeping out, little by little, each time George Thorpe tells the natives that our ways are better than their ways and they must send their children to his school to be reeducated. It spreads out each time the Virginia Company officials sit in London and make decrees that more native lands now belong to colonists. It leaks into our lives every time trees are cut down on a swath of land to build English houses and plant tobacco.
I remember what I overheard that night, months ago: How will they try to kill us next?
Thirty-Six
WHEN I SEE the tall, dark figure with white wings and feathers enter the fort, I am not afraid. I run to get Samuel at the soldiers’ barracks to tell him that Nemattanew will need an interpreter. I find Samuel with a group of young men.
“Ah, Jack of the Feather is back,” says one of the men, and he claps Samuel on the back. “Maybe he wants you to help him stick more feathers to his chest.”
The other men laugh, and Samuel glares at them, stone-faced. As we walk away, I look back. They are cackling and strutting around pretending to be roosters. “Why didn’t you make them stop?” I ask. “Nemattanew deserves more respect than that.”
Samuel stops walking and turns to me. “Those boys are as ignorant as rocks in the river. They don’t know anything about respect. I won’t even bow to their level by correcting them.”
I blink at him. “I never thought of it like that,” I say.
He continues walking. “You should,” he says. “Nemattanew is a great warrior. He knows it, and all of his men know it. He has their respect. He has been in many battles and never been wounded. His men believe he is immortal.”
I remember when I first saw Nemattanew and how I thought he was a magical creature. I wonder if he might be magical after all.
When we get to the center of the fort, we find Nemattanew in conversation with a gentleman, Mr. Morgan. Actually, they are trying to have a conversation with their hands and a few words, and it looks as if they are not getting very far. Nemattanew sees Samuel, calls out, “Peyaquaugh,” and motions him over. What follows is a long sentence in Algonquian, with Samuel’s translation: Would Mr. Morgan be pleased to accompany Nemattanew on a trading mission to the Pamunkey tribe?
“Yes, certainly,” says Mr. Morgan. “I will have my servants prepare my things for the journey.”
A couple of days later, Nemattanew returns. His canoe is already laden with furs, baskets, and clay pots for the trading mission. Mr. Morgan’s servants carry his goods for trade down to the canoe: a brass kettle, pewter spoons, cotton cloth, scissors, an ax, a hoe, and flat pieces of copper. Some of it has been given to him by families who hope he’ll be able to trade it for food to supplement their rations. My mother, of course, has given nothing to the trading mission. We will eat from our own garden and our rations no matter how vehemently Chief Opechancanough denies that he ever wanted to poison us.
* * *
. . .
In September, it always seems that the crickets get louder, chirping all day and night. The sun slants low and hot, and the smell of ripe tobacco is everywhere. Da and Samuel work all day in the tobacco fields along with the other laborers, but in the evenings they talk and plan. They will soon be back on our own land, this time hopefully never to return to laboring for the colony.
“We will move in late December,” Da tells us. “As soon as this tobacco harvest is over, I’ll go get our house ready for the winter and cut enough firewood. That way, we’ll be able to prepare our seedbeds for tobacco during the winter and be ready for March planting.”
Da says he will also make trips back and forth, carting our furniture and stores of food, and then, finally, Mum and the girls and me. Whenever I think of that final day of moving, it stops my breath. We’ll be leaving everyone, Bermuda, Angela, Jane. At least I’ll finally be done with Charles.
One of the first ships to arrive in September brings us fascinating news: we are no longer the only English colony here in the New World. Last December, a ship called the Mayflower, carrying a group of settlers, landed many miles north of here. They have named their colony Plymouth. The settlers have built their houses and storehouses and have made peace with the natives who surround them, the Pokanoket tribe of the Wampanoag people.
I listen to the stories with eagerness. I will never see any of these new settlers, as they are much too far away. But I love knowing they are here on this land, and that they are living in peace with the Pokanokets. If they can live in peace, I hope that it is possible for us to continue to live in peace as well. Our days are intertwined with our native neighbors. Some of them live and work among us in James Town, and the other settlements as well. Many come each day from their villages to help the settlers in the fields or to build houses or fell trees. They have breakfast with English families and then go to work together. In return for their time, we pay them with the things we have that they value: cotton cloth, metal tools, copper and beads, scissors and knives. We are living at peace and benefitting from what we share with each other.
There are changes coming to James Town: Governor Yeardley’s term is nearly over. As each ship arrives, I wonder if our new governor will be on it. I hope that the Virginia Company is sending us a good leader.
In October, ships come one after another, nine in all. Da says we now have over twelve hundred colonists living in our settlements up and down the river. There is one ship that, when it lands at James Town dock, causes great excitement. When I hear the shouts of “Ship ashore!” I tell Mum I will go fetch water so that I can see what is going on at the docks.
This ship brings the news we have been waiting for.
“Yes, he is the new governor.”
“A nobleman of fine stature.”
“And married to the niece of George Sandys, who is to be our new treasurer.”
“Good. The Virginia Company has chosen well.”
The name of our new governor is Sir Francis Wyatt. He is dressed in the finery of a nobleman, but he doesn’t carry himself in that haughty way that Governor Dale used to. Yet for me, Sir Wyatt’s arrival is not the main interest of the day.
There is a small group of new colonists: men with their wives and children, all gesturing and talking loudly in another language. They are short people, with dark hair and round eyes. Their language is definitely not Gaelic, so I know they are not Irish. Who are they?
I listen to the conversations around me, trying to find a hint as to who these foreign people are. When I hear it, when I learn who they are and why they have been sent here, I take off running. I run away from the docks, across the stubbled tobacco fields, to where smoke is rising from the tar pits.
“Bermuda!” I shout. I am so loud, all the men working in the tar pits stop and look at me.
“Bermuda, it’s your wife come to call you to supper,” one of the men says, and they all laugh.
But the teasing doesn’t even bother me. I shout my news at the top of my lungs. “They’ve sent workers from Italy, Bermuda. Glassworkers. They’re going to start up the glass house again!”
Thirty-Seven
BERMUDA WASTES NO time getting himself onto the work crew that is rebuilding the glass house. I see him one evening on his way home from work. He is dirty, exhausted, and very happy.
“How is the work going?” I ask.
“We’re repairing the walls and rebuilding the furnaces,” he says. “Next we’ll put on a new roof.”
I’ve never seen him so alive and excited. I suddenly feel bad for all the times I discouraged him about his glassmaking dream. What I have learned about myself has helped me see him more clearly. “I’m so glad for you,” I say. “And . . . I understand now. I didn’t understand before.” I search for the right words. “Glassmaking is your dream. You have to do it because it’s who you are, and you have to be who you are.”
He tilts his head and looks at me, as though I have put words to something he has felt but not been able to express. “Yes,” he says. “That’s exactly how it is.”
“Well, thank goodness they sent those Italians,” I say.
He beams at me. “I’d better get home before I fall over,” he says. “I’ve been skipping the noon meal.” He hurries toward his cottage.
As I watch him go, I wonder why in the world he wouldn’t be eating his noon meal.
The next day I stop by the Easons’ cottage. Mrs. Eason is stirring a pot of barley and fish stew, so it’s not that the Easons have run out of food.
I don’t even have to ask Mrs. Eason about Bermuda’s strange new eating habits because she immediately starts in about it. “Virginia, would you please take some stew to Bermuda? He won’t come home. All he wants to do is work, work, work. I send him with some bread, but that’s not enough.”
We wrap a bowl in rags so it won’t burn my hands. I put a spoon in my apron pocket and walk carefully down the well-worn path to the glass house.
The glass house is noisy with hammering and clanging. I find Bermuda straining under the weight of an armload of large stones. He lets them drop in front of one of the furnaces. Two of the stones break. I am not prepared for what happens next.
One of the Italian men marches over, swings his arm wide, and smacks Bermuda in the side of the head. Bermuda staggers. A familiar rage rises up in me. In a few steps, I am in front of the man, ready to tell him to leave my friend alone. But one glance into his eyes stops me. There is something wild about him. He is wiry and strong. I know instantly that he would kill me if he were angry enough.
I bring the bowl of stew to Bermuda. “Are you ready to go back to the tar pits yet?” I ask.
“No,” he says. He rubs the side of his face, which is very red, and already beginning to swell. “But I’m ready for them to send Vincenzo back to Italy.”
I look over at the man who slapped him. He is furious, arguing with one of the other Italians, waving his arms and gesturing at the broken stones.
“All you did was break some rocks,” I say. “It’s not like there aren’t plenty more.”
“He’s always mad,” Bermuda says. “Leone, the one he’s yelling at now, speaks some English. He told me that Vincenzo hates it here. He complains that all we have is corn and hardly any wheat. They call our corn porridge ‘polenta’ and Vincenzo doesn’t like it. He wants something called ‘pasta.’ I don’t know what ‘pasta’ is, but it is made from wheat.”
Bermuda gratefully takes the spoon and bowl from me and sits down on a wooden plank to eat. I sit next to him. In between bites, he continues to talk. “Leone also said that in Italy, every town has its own dialect of Italian and there is no one else from Vincenzo’s town here, so it’s hard for him to talk to anyone except his wife.”
“At least he can talk to her,” I say.
“Yes, but she is afraid of him,” Bermuda says.
I look at Bermuda’s swollen face. I hope Vincenzo doesn’t do the same thing to his wife. “Does it hurt?” I ask.
He shrugs. “It’s not bad.”
It is almost noon, and in small groups, the men leave to go home to eat. Finally, it is quiet in the glass house, with only me and Bermuda.
“What do you do when they all leave? Why won’t you go home, too?” I ask.
“I stay here and work in peace without being afraid that Vincenzo will hit me,” he says.
Bermuda has waited so long for his dream to come true, and now he has to work with this wild man. I wish that somehow I could fix it for him.
“Are they going to send him back to Italy?” I ask hopefully.
“No, I just wish they would,” he says.
Bermuda finishes his stew and hops up. “Let me show you what we’re doing.”
First, he gestures over our heads, where the frame of a roof is already up. “We’re finishing the new roof soon,” he says.
Then he points to a medium-sized furnace built of rocks and mortar. “This is the fritting furnace. You mix together river sand, crushed oyster shells for lime, and ashes for potash, and put it in here to start to heat up.”
He takes me to look at the biggest furnace, which is broken and crumbling. “We have a lot of repair work to do on this one,” he says. “It’s the main furnace and it gets the hottest. It gets so hot, it makes the sand, shells, and potash mixture into melted glass.” He picks up a long metal rod. “You put the end of this rod into the oven to pick up a lump of molten glass. Then you shape it”—he twirls the rod—“you blow air into it to make it hollow”—he blows through the rod. “Then you use this wooden paddle to flatten the bottom before it cools off too much.
“When you’ve got your drinking glass or pitcher or whatever you’ve made, you put it in here.” He points to the smallest oven. “That’s the annealing furnace, where the glass cools down slowly so it won’t crack.”
Bermuda’s eyes shine with enthusiasm. I can see exactly why he puts up with Vincenzo for the chance to be around this thing he has wanted for so long.
“You already know how to make glass, from start to finish,” I say.
“Leone says as soon as we’ve got things up and running, he’ll teach me,” he says. “It’s not as easy as it sounds.”
“I’m glad some of the Italians are nice,” I say.
“They’re all nice except Vincenzo.” He looks at me sideways. “Can you give him the summer flux?”
I blush, remembering my threat the last time someone punched Bermuda. I play along. “Hmmm. I’m afraid it’s too late for that since it’s already autumn. Would you settle for a different illness? Scurvy, maybe?”
“Anything that would send him to bed and keep him away from here is fine with me,” Bermuda says.
I know Bermuda considers this “witch” talk only a joke.
“I’d better go,” I say. “If I don’t get home soon, I’ll miss my own noon meal.”
“Thanks for bringing the stew,” Bermuda says.
* * *
. . .
Mrs. Eason begins to depend on me to bring food to Bermuda, and my mother doesn’t mind, so I get to see the glass house taking shape. One day I get there and Bermuda is up on the framed roof, helping to fasten down woven reed mats to close the roof in. The next day he is slapping handfuls of wet clay between the large stones of the biggest furnace.
“That’s the one that will get the hottest, right?” I ask. “Where it all melts, and you put the rod in to pull some out to make a drinking glass?”
“Yes,” he says. “And the repairs are almost done.” He brushes a shock of hair out of his eyes, smearing a streak of clay onto his face.
“Stay still,” I say. I take a lump of wet clay and draw lines on his face, the way the natives do when they have a dance or a feast. “There,” I say, “now you’re ready for a celebration.”
Bermuda takes my cue. He stretches out his arms and begins to dance in the rhythmic, flat-footed way we’ve seen the natives do. The Italians and the other workers are quitting work for the midday break, and they stop to watch Bermuda. Someone begins to drum a stick against a flat board. Others begin to clap in time or tap stones together. There are two native men on the work crew and they drum in rhythm with their hands on wooden planks.
As I watch Bermuda, it is as though I can feel his heart flying: his dream is taking shape. Soon he will be a glassmaker.
One by one the musicians quit to go home to eat, and Bermuda ends his dance. Sweat rolls down his face, smearing the clay lines.
“We’re almost ready,” he says. “As soon as the clay on this furnace dries, we’ll start the fires. It will take a few weeks to get hot enough to melt the glass.”
“Weeks?” I ask, amazed.
He guides me behind the glass house, where large piles of wood are stacked. “Workers have been cutting hardwood for weeks. But first we need to dry the wood in the furnaces because it is fresh-cut. Then, once it’s dry, we have to burn it down to charcoal since charcoal burns hotter than wood. Then we can burn the charcoal to melt the glass.”
I shake my head. “That’s a lot of work. And a lot of waiting,” I say.
“I’ve waited this long,” he says. “I can wait a few more weeks.”
Thirty-Eight
IT STARTS AS a breeze that lifts my hair and makes me look into the sky at the low dark clouds.
“It’s going to rain,” I tell Alice. “Rinse what you have soaped up, and let’s go.” She is learning to wash clothes in the river, and doing quite well at it.
The wind picks up quickly and by the time we carry the wet laundry back to the cottage, it is whipping our skirts against our legs. We rush into the cottage and shut the door behind us. Mum has a pot of melted bayberry wax and she is dipping strings into it to make us a new batch of candles.
“Storm’s coming,” I say quietly, because Katherine is napping.
Mum nods. “I could smell the rain. Hurry and close the shutters.”
I go outside to close and latch the shutters. It has begun to rain and people are scurrying, taking in laundry, ushering small children indoors. I am relieved to know that Da and Samuel are working inside one of the tobacco barns. The crop is now being twisted and rolled and wound into balls to be ready to ship to England.
