Poison in the Colony, page 9
“That is what I felt, too, behind all the agreeable words,” Samuel says. “But Mr. Thorpe will keep on giving gifts to Chief Opechancanough, and offering this education to their children, and being friendly and kind.” He shrugs. “Maybe it will change him.”
I nod slowly, wanting to believe that this change is possible.
Samuel squints toward the sun, turning red on the horizon. “And maybe it won’t.”
Twenty-Two
I HEAR THE scuffling and the shouts before I see the fight.
“Get him, he deserves it!”
“Beat the snot out of him and he’ll never insult us again!”
The noise is coming from behind the church. When I come around the corner, I see who is being beaten up: Bermuda. There is a circle of children watching. It is Charles doing the beating. He grabs Bermuda by his shirt and punches him hard in the face. Bermuda’s nose is streaming blood.
“Stop! Stop this now!” I shout.
Bermuda drops to his knees, his arms raised for protection. “You and your family are poor beggars and always will be.” Charles spits out the words. Then he yanks Bermuda up and whacks the side of his head so hard, Bermuda goes sprawling onto the ground.
Rage overtakes me. I jump onto Charles’s back, latch one arm across his neck, and press hard. He lets out a guttural, strangled noise. He shakes his body violently, trying to throw me off. He punches my legs. But I am like a rabid dog. I do not let go. I will strangle him. I will kill him if I have to.
Charles stops moving. He hangs his arms down limp at his sides. I know this trick all too well. I keep my grip and growl into his ear, “You will not treat Bermuda like this again. And if you do, I will see to it that you die of the summer flux. Do you understand?”
Charles nods slightly. I press harder against his windpipe, unwilling to give him relief. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Bermuda scoot himself outside the circle. I see the other children watching, wide-eyed.
Suddenly Charles throws himself backward. In one swift motion, I am slammed to the ground. He lands his bulk on top of me and I hear a snap. Pain shoots through my right arm. I can’t breathe. Charles rolls off me and stands. I stagger to my feet. He scowls at me.
“I will not punch a girl. Especially not a witch,” he says. “Besides, I have everything I need now.”
He walks away, and the children disperse with him.
I sit down in the dirt, hang my head, and grasp my throbbing arm. What was I thinking? How could I have been so careless, threatening the summer flux as if I know how to cast a spell?
Bermuda comes over and sits with me. Blood still streams down his face and chin. His shirt is more dirt and blood than white cloth. “I’m sorry, Virginia,” he says in a small voice.
“It’s not your fault,” I say.
“Why did he call you a witch?” Bermuda asks. “Do you know how to give someone the summer flux?”
“No,” I say in a weak voice. Pain pulses in my arm. It feels as though my world is crashing down around me. I hold my head and begin to cry.
* * *
. . .
Samuel and Angela find us.
“Oh, no,” Samuel says. He crouches down to look at the two of us, bleeding and muddy and miserable. “What on earth happened?”
Angela pulls a clean handkerchief out of her apron pocket and begins to clean Bermuda’s face. “You lie down. Stop the blood,” she orders him.
Bermuda does as he is told. “It was a fight,” he says, his voice muffled behind the handkerchief Angela is holding to his nose.
“Ah,” says Samuel, “and who won?”
I moan. The pain in my arm is making me feel faint and I don’t care who won.
“We won,” says Bermuda brightly. “They left.” He tries to sit up, but blood trickles out of his nose, so Angela pushes him down again.
“Well, if winning a fight means getting the other fellow to stop beating you up, then I guess you won,” says Samuel with more than a hint of sarcasm. Then he turns his attention to me. “Virginia, you look like you’ve seen a ghost. Are you all right?”
Darkness crowds the edges of my vision and I feel cold sweat break out on my forehead. “Home . . .” I say.
“Up you go,” Samuel says, and he grasps my right arm to help me up.
Searing pain shoots through me. I scream. Everything goes black.
* * *
. . .
When I come to, Samuel is carrying me. My left arm is draped over his shoulder and my right arm hangs loosely.
Samuel sees my open eyes. “Why didn’t you tell us you were injured?” he asks. “We thought this was Bermuda’s fight.”
“It was Bermuda’s fight,” I mumble.
We arrive at my family’s cottage. I shut my eyes tightly. My mother will be furious at me for getting hurt. And for what I said to Charles.
Samuel brings me inside and lays me down on the bed. Alice runs up to me. “Are you sick, Ginny?” she asks.
I shake my head. “I’m fine,” I assure her. “Just a little bit hurt.”
My mother has Katherine on one hip. She leaves the stew pot she was stirring to come look at me. “What happened here?” she demands. Angela takes Katherine from her. My mother sits on the bed with me and smooths back my hair. I cringe. She will not be so compassionate when she hears about the threat I made.
Samuel tells her the story, obviously told to him by Bermuda while I was blacked out. He says Bermuda bragged to Charles and those other sons and daughters of gentlemen that his father was going to be a gentleman now that he and Bermuda’s mother were being given land. My eyes grow wide. Bermuda handily started that fight himself. Samuel’s story ends with, “She was trying to defend him and got herself hurt. I think her arm is broken.”
My mother clicks her tongue. “Well now, while you were out getting into trouble, Bermuda, did you ever think that maybe Virginia has work she has to do? Did you? How am I to manage with two little ones and the cooking and the washing and sewing for the colony without Virginia to help me? Did you think of that when you decided to go bragging?”
I look through hazy vision at Bermuda. He hangs his head and sniffles. My mother is not finished. “The rules are different here, Bermuda. We common folk will be given land—you won’t find that in England for sure. But don’t go thinking—or saying—that it makes you any less a commoner. That is what you are, and that is what you will always be. Especially when it comes to their judgment of you.” When she says their, it is with a flash of disdain.
“So, what do you expect me to do now, young man? Now that you’ve gone and gotten my daughter injured?” Mum looks as though she’ll bore a hole through Bermuda’s head with her stare. Even as woozy as I am, I know exactly what my mother is doing.
Bermuda looks up at her sheepishly. He shrugs. “I don’t know,” he says in a near whisper.
I close my eyes. “You’re going to be working for her,” I say.
“Exactly,” Mum says. “And the first thing you can do is go fetch me water.”
Bermuda doesn’t dare object. He picks up a bucket and goes out immediately.
Mum then turns her attention to me. She moves expert, gentle fingers over my arm. When she hits the bad place, I groan. “All right,” Mum says quietly. “It is broken. I’ll have to set it.”
She looks up to Samuel and Angela. “I’ll need two thin boards and strips of rags . . . and whiskey if anyone has some to spare.”
Though there is no wine or whiskey made in the colony—only ale—sometimes newcomers bring whiskey with them. I wonder what my mother needs it for. Maybe to clean my scratches and scrapes?
Angela sets Katherine down, and she and Samuel leave to gather things. My eyes fill with tears. “I’m so sorry, Mum,” I say.
Alice pats my cheek. “Don’t cry, Ginny,” she says. “Be a big girl, don’t cry.”
Katherine toddles over and, imitating Alice’s nice pats, she smacks my face.
“I’m sorry, too,” Mum says. “But that Bermuda will learn a few things about taking care of babies and doing women’s work.”
“Mum, I did another bad thing,” I say. My stomach twists. “I told Charles I would make sure he got the summer flux if he ever bothered Bermuda again.”
Mum stiffens.
I continue, knowing I have to tell her the whole thing. “He called me a witch. He said he has everything he needs now to make a report to the governor.”
Mum hangs her head and folds her hands. “Lord have mercy on us all.”
I swallow hard. “I’m sorry, Mum. I was just so angry. I didn’t think . . .”
“Virginia, I won’t be able to save you,” she says. There is both fear and determination in her voice. “If that boy accuses you, I won’t be able to protect you. But for the sake of these two little ones, I will protect myself.”
Her words jar me. I expected her to be angry, to reprimand me and punish me. I did not expect her to abandon me. I feel suddenly distant and alone, as if there is nowhere I belong anymore.
“Charles has lived through quite a few summers here,” Mum is saying, trying to make me feel better. I probably look like I’m about to faint again. “Likely the summer flux won’t bother him this summer either. It’s best not to worry now.”
But I am already withdrawing inside. If my own mother will not vow to love and protect me, then I am alone. I certainly can’t tell my father about any of this. I begin to shiver and find I can’t stop. Mum puts extra blankets over me, but it doesn’t help.
Samuel, Angela, and Bermuda all arrive back at the same time. “We’ve got the boards and the rags, but no whiskey,” Samuel says.
“And the water,” says Bermuda.
“Good,” Mum says. “She’ll just have to do without the whiskey.”
Do what without the whiskey? I wonder.
But before another thought can enter my head, my mother grasps my arm above and below the break. She pulls hard to set the bone in place. I feel a shriek of pain, then fall into darkness once more.
Twenty-Three
OVER THE NEXT few days, the pain in my arm subsides, but the pain in my heart does not. I am like an outsider, looking in at my family: my mother combing Alice’s hair, my father kissing my mother before he leaves for the fields, Alice making Katherine laugh playing peekaboo. They are each loved. But I am different. There is something inside me that makes me strange, makes me unable to be loved and protected. In fact, it makes me a danger to all of them.
I spend my days with Bermuda, helping him with our household chores as best I can. He tries to learn how to change soiled diapers, but he can’t keep hold of Katherine’s feet and she keeps kicking into the mess and making things worse. Mum finally gives up and says she’ll do it herself. Bermuda does not, however, get out of the job of washing soiled diapers in the river, along with the rest of our household laundry.
All the while I am waiting, expecting, dreading what Charles will find in his power to do to me. Every time I see him, he gives me a sly, knowing look, as if he is now in control, the predator, and I am his prey.
One evening, Samuel finds me in front of our cottage, closing our shutters for the night. “How is the arm?” he asks.
“Better each day,” I say.
“I want to tell you something,” he says. “Something I had to learn when I was your age.”
I raise my eyebrows. “How to shoot a musket?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “About getting angry.”
I pout. “Oh, that.”
“Captain Smith and Reverend Hunt helped me learn that instead of letting my anger burst out punching and fighting, I could channel it. I could calm myself inside. Then I could make a better decision, one that wouldn’t get me into so much trouble.”
I sweep a cloud of gnats away with my one good arm. “How do you calm anger when it feels like a fire-breathing dragon?” I ask.
“First, I take a deep breath,” he says. He thinks a moment. “You could imagine dumping a bucket of water on the dragon’s fire,” he suggests.
“If I had doused the dragon, I might still have jumped on Charles to protect Bermuda,” I say. “But I wouldn’t have threatened to give Charles the summer flux . . . and I wouldn’t be waiting to see if he accuses me of being a witch.”
* * *
. . .
Da is called away to help build houses at one of the outlying plantations. I don’t want him to leave. He promises he’ll only be gone for a little while, and to send Samuel to fetch him if I need him.
One day, soon after Da leaves, there is a knock on our door. It is Ensign Spence. He is a gentleman, one of the representatives to the House of Burgesses for James Town, and he also serves as assistant to Governor Yeardley. He brings the news I have been dreading: I have been accused. There will be a trial. In four days’ time, at the next meeting of the General Assembly and the General Court, several cases will be heard, mine among them. I must be present to hear the testimony against me. My crime? Practicing witchcraft. The punishment? Public hanging.
When Ensign Spence leaves, I drop into a chair. Mum is pale and shaking. I look at her, wishing I could beg her for help, but I know I can’t. We are both silent. Alice makes up for our lack of words.
“I don’t like that man,” she says. “I want him to stay away. Ginny, why are you sad now? What is a tri-yul?”
“Shush.” Mum tries to quiet her.
But Alice keeps it up. “I want to know what a tri-yul is.”
Katherine feels the tension and begins to cry. Mum picks her up. “Shush, Alice,” she snaps. “You’ve upset the baby.” Katherine cries even harder.
Alice. Katherine. Mum, for them. These are the people who can be protected now, not me. Alice. Katherine. They need their supper. I stand and walk to the fire. I watch my hand pick up the ladle and stir together the barley and peas of our loblolly. I will ladle it into their bowls. They will eat and be healthy. They will grow up strong and will not disappoint my mother the way I have. Once I am gone from the family, they will no longer be in danger.
That night I lie awake long after the others have gone to sleep. What will it be like to die, I wonder? Will I meet my grandmother? Will she take my hand and say, “I died a witch’s death, too”? I shiver. I have only four days to wait to meet my fate.
* * *
. . .
Of course, there are no secrets in James Town. The next day Bermuda wants to know what is all this about a trial. Samuel comes by to tell me not to worry, that Governor Yeardley is squeamish about hangings and he certainly won’t want to hang a young girl. Even Angela comes and embraces me.
“Remember,” she says, holding my shoulders and looking into my eyes. “That day you find me? I was afraid I die all alone in the forest. But you save me, give me apples and wet bread.” We both laugh a little, remembering the soggy bread. “You have courage in here,” she says, putting her hand on my heart. “Go inside, Virginia. Find who you are.”
I nod, though I am not exactly sure how to do what she is telling me to do.
There are those who are not so kind. When I go to fetch water, the other girls at the well whisper to each other and look away. Even Reverend Buck, when he sees me picking up our rations, says, “This is a very serious charge, Virginia. I hope to God it’s not true.”
I want to shout, “Of course it’s not true!” But I am too ashamed to speak. I hurry back to our cottage with our rations and slam our shutters closed.
“Why are you blocking out the light, Virginia?” my mother asks.
I choke back tears. “May I please work only in the cottage for the next few days?” I plead. “I can’t go out there anymore.”
Mum lays her hand against my cheek. I feel her fear. Fear for herself and what would happen to the little ones if she were gone. But especially fear for me. “Of course you can,” she says. “But let’s open the shutters so that I can see my sewing.”
The next few days have a strange lightness about them. Mum and I both know, without saying it, that if all is lost, we must enjoy what is important now. We work side by side, grinding corn, kneading dough for our bread, keeping the candles burning and Katherine’s diapers changed. We tell stories about the good things we remember. I take time to play with the girls, making them laugh with handy-dandy prickly-pandy. Finally, on the day before my trial, we send Samuel to get my father. We didn’t want him to spend those days worrying from afar, but I don’t want to die without seeing him again.
When Da arrives home, he is furious. “That boy and his family have done enough to us!” he shouts. I know he is remembering the child Mum lost because of her whipping. We all knew it was Charles’s father who made the accusation against Mum, and Governor Dale who carried out his own form of justice.
Da lowers his voice to a growl. “I will sue him for defamation of character,” he says. “He will pay.”
Da points one finger at me. “You were careless, Virginia. You don’t deserve this, but you were careless.” He paces. I have never seen him this angry.
“I’m sorry, Da,” I say.
He raises his hand as if he will strike me. I cower. Then he grabs his own hand as though he is shocked at what he almost did.
“They will give us land because we are ancients,” he says, still seething. “But make no mistake. We are still commoners, and the gentlemen and nobles still hold the power.” He narrows his eyes at me. “Do not ever speak to your betters that way again. Do you understand?”
