Poison in the Colony, page 17
Back inside the cottage, Alice says, “The wind wants to blow our cottage away.”
Mum and I both laugh. “Of course it won’t do that,” I tell her. “You’ve seen lots of storms before. It will rain and the wind will blow and there will be thunder and lightning, and then it will be over and the sun will come out.”
“There is no thunder,” Alice says.
By now our shutters and door are rattling and we can hear sheets of rain hitting the roof. Alice is right. There is no thunder. And the wind is stronger than in any storm I’ve ever seen.
An eerie, high whine starts up. It is the wind blowing through the holes in our walls, spraying rain with it. The cottage is shaking. Mum and I look at each other. “What is this?” I ask. “It is no normal storm.”
The wind howls. Rain hits the cottage like handfuls of rocks. There is a loud crash as something blown outside slams into our cottage. The noise wakes Katherine and she begins to whimper. Alice gets onto the bed with her and hides under the covers. Over the din I hear Alice’s voice. “It wants to blow our cottage away!”
Mum has stopped working on her candles.
“What should we do?!” I ask her. Surely she will know how to keep us safe. But she just shakes her head, her eyes wide.
Suddenly a gust of wind blows our door wide open. Rain shoots across the room. I lay my weight against the door and try to push it shut but I am not strong enough. Mum joins me and we both push with all our might. We get it closed and Mum holds it. “The table!” she cries.
I shove the table across the room. We lift it up on end and brace it against the door. The wind is a loud low rumble and a high whine. It is everywhere. Alice and Katherine are both crying, hiding under the blankets.
Mum and I do the only thing we can do. We pick up the two little ones, hold them and tell them everything will be all right, and we pray for God to deliver us from this storm.
* * *
. . .
Those who have been through storms at sea say it was undoubtedly a hurricane. It has uprooted trees and swept away cottages. No one was killed, but many colonists have been injured. The commoners come to us with cuts and bruises and broken bones. Mum and Jane and I treat them with bandages, poultices, and splints. The “better sort,” the gentlemen and nobles, go to the doctor to be treated.
* * *
. . .
The roof of the glass house is completely gone. I bring Bermuda his food one day, and see that the inside is flooded, with pools of water to splash through as the workers keep the fires burning in the furnaces.
“We’ll nail down boards this time,” says Bermuda. “No more thatched roof.” He is cheerful. This latest setback can’t damage his hopeful mood.
I survey the group of workers. “Where’s Vincenzo?” I ask in a low voice.
Bermuda gives a little smile. “Sick,” he says.
I raise my eyebrows.
“Good job,” he says, then punches me in the arm to let me know he is only kidding.
“I hope he stays sick,” I whisper.
* * *
. . .
In late November, with the tobacco harvest shipped off and the cottages repaired, Da and Samuel are ready to leave for Elizabeth City. Bermuda’s mum and da have already moved to their new house on Martin’s Hundred, and so Bermuda now lives in the soldiers’ barracks. He has promised his parents he’ll come live with them in March to help get ready for planting time on the farm. I know it will be hard for him to leave the glass house, but he is a good son.
James Town is so crowded now, Mum says another family will be in our house before we’re all loaded onto the boat. It feels very strange to be going to a new home and for my home to become someone else’s.
Mum worries about Bermuda. She says he is too young to be living on his own and might not be getting his full rations. One day she sends me with porridge and bread for his midday meal. When I get there, Bermuda is alone, tending the fire in the furnace where the wood is being dried and made into charcoal. He opens the small door to add more wood. The heat blasts him, blowing back his hair, and his face turns red. He shuts the furnace door and comes to take the food from me.
“Thank you,” he says. “I love your mum’s cooking.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “It’s plain porridge,” I say. “It’s no different from anyone else’s porridge. What do you boys eat in those barracks anyway?”
“Some of the boys know how to make loblolly,” he says.
He definitely looks thinner. But it is clear that not even being hungry could turn him away from his dream of making glass.
“How much longer now?” I ask.
His whole face lights up. “Just a few days and Leone says we will mix the sand and crushed shells and potash and start it heating. Then it will take a while to melt.”
We hear voices as the workers start arriving after eating. There is one loud, angry voice above the rest. Vincenzo.
“Sometimes he comes back drunk,” Bermuda whispers.
I grimace. If it were one of the regular colonists caught drunk, he would be punished severely. But I’ve heard that these Italians are above the law because they are the only ones who can do the glassmaking.
“He was so violent toward his wife, the governor was afraid he would kill her,” Bermuda says quietly. “So they sent her back to Italy on one of the ships. Now Vincenzo is madder than ever.”
Vincenzo’s eyes are wild. As he nears us, he glares at Bermuda. I take hold of Bermuda and start to pull him away. Vincenzo picks up a crowbar. He shouts a stream of angry words, walking toward the large furnace.
Everyone is quiet now, watching, ready to protect themselves from this crazy man.
Vincenzo swings the crowbar. With all the force of his rage, he brings it down upon the furnace. There is a loud crack, and smoke billows into the air. Bermuda shouts, “No!” and rushes at Vincenzo. Vincenzo raises the crowbar over Bermuda’s head. I scream and dash forward. I crash into Bermuda, knocking him to the ground.
There is loud shouting. “Get him, lads. Tie him up!”
Three men grab Vincenzo. They hold him facedown on the ground. He struggles and yells, but they shove his face into the dirt. Someone tosses them a rope and they bind his ankles and tie his wrists behind him. Then they tie his wrists to his ankles.
“There, now he’s tied like the pig that he is,” one man says.
Bermuda and I pick ourselves up. “Are you all right?” I ask.
He looks at the furnace, which is spewing smoke and losing precious heat. His face is pained. Does he even realize he was just nearly killed?
“Bermuda, you can fix the furnace,” I say.
He nods and wipes his eyes.
“That man almost killed you,” I say.
“Maybe we can put river clay over the break,” he says. “We’d better do it quickly, before too much heat is lost.” He starts toward the door.
I grasp his arm and jerk him toward me. “Are you even paying attention? It’s not safe for you to be working around Vincenzo anymore. You need to go back to the tar pits. It’s too dangerous here.”
He just stares at me as if he doesn’t comprehend my words.
“What if next time I’m not here to push you out of the way?” I demand. “What if he kills you?”
Bermuda looks over at Vincenzo where he is struggling against his ropes and cursing in Italian. “I hope that if he does, I get to make some glass first,” he says. Then he marches out the door to go get river clay.
I take a few steps to follow him, but then I stop. It dawns on me that Bermuda is living his life the way I am now living mine. He is claiming his truth, and being exactly who he is, no matter what the danger and no matter what the cost.
Thirty-Nine
TOWARD THE END of December, Samuel and my father come from Elizabeth City with two rowboats, ready to take all our household things, and us, to our new home. On moving day, we start before sunup. We dump the corn husks out of our mattresses and fold up the linen, ready to make new mattresses from the husks Da has saved for us in Elizabeth City. After breakfast we load our pots, spoons, knives, plates, drinking flasks, and bowls into a crate and cushion them with our blankets. Alice and Katherine are excited, running back and forth, trying to help but mostly getting in the way.
Angela comes to visit, looking sad. “James Town will not be the same without your family,” she says.
I hug her tightly. “You will be with us soon,” I whisper in her ear.
Angela helps to carry our things to the boats. Samuel kisses her right there in front of all of us, which makes Alice giggle.
Bermuda comes to say goodbye. He is holding something wrapped in a rag. “I have a present for you,” he says. He hands it to me. It is warm. When I unwrap it, I am astonished. It is glass. Green, heavy glass. It looks like it used to be a drinking flask that somehow got squashed into sort of a lump, but it is glass.
“It was my first try. I just took it out of the annealing furnace so I could give it to you,” he says.
“You made this?” I ask, still hardly believing.
“I know it’s not very good. Leone says I have a lot to learn. But he says I didn’t burn my hand off, so that’s a great start.”
“It is amazing,” I say.
“I wanted you to have it before you left,” he says.
“But it’s your first one. Don’t you want to keep it?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “I’ll make more.” He looks down at the ground. “I’m going to miss you,” he mumbles.
I stare at the warm lump of green glass in my hand. It blurs, and suddenly I know there is something I need to say or I will never forgive myself. “You’ve been a good friend, Bermuda,” I blurt out. “I’m going to miss you, too.”
“I’ll come visit you,” he says. “I’ll steal a boat if I have to.”
“Come on, you two,” Da calls. “There’s more to load.”
Da has decided that we can fit our chairs into the boats, but we will leave our table and our bed frames for the next family. He and Samuel have been using their carpentry skills at the new house and have already built most of what we need.
As Bermuda and I carry chairs from our cottage to the river, he chatters on about the glassmaking. “You get the lump of molten glass on the end of the rod, right?” he says. “Then, the faster you twirl it, the more it spreads out.” He puts his chairs down for a moment and makes me stop so he can demonstrate the exact twirling motion. “Then when you blow through the rod to make the piece hollow, you have to blow just right. You should see what those Italians can do,” he says. “They are like magicians.”
“What about Vincenzo?” I ask. “Is he still hog-tied?”
Bermuda laughs. “He complains that the sand is no good, that he can’t make decent glass with this river sand. If you saw what he did make, you wouldn’t even believe it. Perfectly shaped pitchers and goblets. He is the best of all of them.”
“So that’s why they put up with him,” I say. “Be careful around Vincenzo, please.”
“I will,” he promises. “At least he’s happier now that he is making glass.”
When we get to the river, Angela is holding Katherine and she has Alice by the hand, keeping the girls out of the way. Mum and Da are still loading one boat. Samuel is already sitting in the other rowboat, which is fully loaded, his oars ready.
“Katherine, you want to come with me?” Samuel calls out. “I’m good at taking babies down the river without their mothers.”
The joke is meant for me and my parents, about the time when I was that baby. But Katherine whines, “No!” and clings tightly to Angela.
“Don’t worry, you’re going with Mum,” Da tells her.
Suddenly, I want to leave. Right now, this minute, get the goodbyes over with, be done with James Town fort and start on this new adventure. “Mum, will you be all right without me if I go with Samuel?” I ask.
She nods, and I splash into the cold water of the river. Samuel steadies the boat so I can climb in. I sit atop a wooden crate and wave to Angela and Bermuda. “Goodbye. Come see us,” I call.
Samuel rows out into the current and we drift away from the little group onshore. I feel a tug at my heart. But then I look up into the sky, blue with the morning sun. New. It will all be new.
“We have good luck when you and I go down the river together, right?” I say to Samuel.
“Yes, we do,” he says, and pulls strongly on his oars.
Forty
OUR HOUSE IS huge. Instead of being one room like our cottage, it has three entire rooms: the kitchen and then two separate rooms for sleeping that Da calls bed rooms. It also has a wooden floor instead of plain earth. “There won’t be so many spiders,” says Mum.
We have not just one but three shuttered windows, one for each room, and the most amazing thing is that in the kitchen, there is a diamond-shaped piece of clear glass set in the wall. Sunlight glints through it, and I realize it will let light in even when it is stormy or cold out because we won’t have to shutter it closed.
“What is that?” I ask Da.
“It’s a window, only with glass,” Da says. “They’re used in England all the time. We just don’t have very many of them in the colony, but surely you’ve seen them in church and some of the fancier houses.”
I blush. Of course, I’ve seen them. “I guess I just never thought I’d live in a house that had one,” I say.
The whole house smells deliciously of newly cut wood. The hearth is wide and welcoming, and Mum immediately gets a fire going. Then she puts Alice and Katherine to work stuffing dried corn husks into our mattress linens. I set to grinding corn with the mortar and pestle.
By the time evening comes and a light rain has begun to fall, we have newly made mattresses and a big pot of porridge to fill our bellies. Everything seems to be going well until bedtime.
I am washing up the dinner bowls when I hear Alice’s angry voice. “No! I made it, and it does not belong in here.”
I look up to see Alice dragging a mattress out of one of the bed rooms and into the kitchen.
“Alice, this is a bigger house,” Mum says patiently. “Don’t worry, Virginia and Katherine will be with you.”
“No!” Alice stomps her feet. “It is not right.”
Da steps in. “You made the mattress, but I built this house.” He drags the mattress back into the bed room and puts it on the bed frame.
Alice begins to whimper. Da picks up Katherine. “You want to sleep in your new bed room, don’t you, Katherine? Alice, look how good Katherine is being. Come on, let’s go see your new room.” He carries Katherine into the room, and I assume he puts her down on the bed, because the next thing I hear is loud wailing. “No bed room!” Katherine cries.
“I don’t want to sleep in a bed room!” Alice whines, and she joins in the wailing.
Samuel arrives back with an armload of firewood. “What happened here—did the king die?” he asks.
Da comes back in carrying a very loud Katherine. He looks at Mum helplessly.
“Maybe just this one night,” Mum says. “Today was such a big change.”
And so, we make Alice and Katherine happy by moving aside the table and chairs, dragging both mattresses into the kitchen, and all bedding down together, including Samuel, who thought he’d have the kitchen all to himself.
“The floor is made of wood, so it’s almost like a bed frame,” Mum says before she blows out the candle.
Alice is especially happy because she gets to sleep next to Samuel. “She still wets the bed sometimes,” I say in the dark, from the other side of the mattress.
Samuel groans.
“I do not,” Alice insists.
“Every once in a while,” I say.
“Good night,” Mum says emphatically, to let us know it is time to stop talking.
“Good night,” we all mumble, and we drop off to sleep in our new home.
* * *
. . .
The next few days turn bitter cold, and no one wants to sleep away from the hearth fire, so each evening we drag the mattresses into the kitchen for our family bed. Da says it’s like the inns in England, where there is one big bed and all the travelers who stop in for the night sleep in it whether they know each other or not.
Despite everything Da and Samuel have done, we still have lots of work to do. Mum and I tie up our skirts and get a ground fire going on the land that has already been cleared. We control the fire with metal rakes to keep it creeping along, burning up dry leaves, twigs, roots, and the smaller stumps that have been left behind. The fire clears the debris, preparing the ground so that we can plant, and it also creates potash, which will help our crops to grow.
Da and Samuel take the girls and go to work on finishing the barn. Alice and Katherine think they are helping, fetching tools and pieces of wood, but mostly they are being kept safely away from the ground fire.
On Christmas Day, we attend church in Elizabeth City. It is not a long walk from our house to the church, only a couple of miles. It is strange to go to a new church in a new place with new neighbors and a new minister, Reverend Jonas Stockton.
After services, Mum looks very happy, chatting with the other women. I look to see if there is anyone my age. But most all of the children are small, like my sisters. Alice and Katherine have already found two little girls to skip around with.
