Roanoke (The Keepers of the Ring) (36 page)

She must have imagined it all.
Pain could do strange things to a woman’s mind. She closed her eyes and smiled through the embracing folds of sleep.

Eleanor finished swaddling the baby girl and breathed a sigh of relief when the child responded to her breast and began to nurse.
At least the child had been born. If Jocelyn died, some part of her would continue. “John White will be glad to see you when he comes,” she whispered to the infant. The child blinked wide blue eyes, and Eleanor smiled. “He’ll be here soon, and the governor will be mighty proud of you.”

She waited a few moments, letting the infant suckle, then crossed the room to the bed where her cousin lay.
At first glance, Jocelyn appeared to be asleep—her arms were crossed over her chest, her lips still a rosy pink. But surely no woman could endure the pain and loss of blood Jocelyn had experienced and live.

An ammoniac smell of sweat and urine rose from a salve the savage woman was rubbing into Jocelyn
’s skin, and Eleanor wanted to tell the woman to stop, but she did not know how. The child wriggled with surprising strength in Eleanor’s arms. Without a doubt, Jocelyn’s strong will would live on.

The sound of the baby
’s crying had carried through the village, and a crowd had assembled outside the door. Eleanor closed her bodice and stepped outside, squinting in the bright sunlight.

“
The baby is born?”

“
Boy or girl?”

“
How’s the mother?”

“
Has anyone told the minister?”

“
‘Tis a beautiful child—just like her mother.”

She answered their questions as best she could, and held the baby patiently as a stream of villagers came by to take a look.
After a moment, the crowd parted like the Red Sea as the minister came forward, his eyes weary and blood-shot. Defeat covered him like a mantle.

“
My wife is dead, then.”

Eleanor shook her head slightly.
“I know not. Perchance she has a little life left—why don’t you go to her?”

He paused, and Eleanor remembered his reluctance to associate with the Indian woman he had called a
“heathen.” But then the Indian woman came out of the house, murmured something to Ananias, and left with her husband in the same dignified manner in which she had come.

The minister stepped back and surveyed the crowd as if he would say something, then he seemed to change his mind.
He stooped through the low door of the house and closed it, leaving the villagers to their speculations.

And, outside, Eleanor Dare wondered why he had not even looked at his new daughter.

Thomas marveled that anyone could go through such agony and look so peaceful. Jocelyn lay under her blanket as if sleeping, her hair brushed away from her forehead, a gentle smile curving upon her lips. He stepped forward and took her hand in his, and was surprised to find the skin still warm.

“Thomas?” The sleepy murmur jolted him.

“
Yes?”

She opened sleepy-cat eyes, and smiled.
“I saw the baby. A girl.”

“
Yes.” He could not trust himself to say more, so full was his heart. Had God heard his prayer? He didn’t deserve an answer, for he had played the fool and the coward, but God was sovereign, and sent his mercy to the just and unjust . . .

Jocelyn said nothing more, but seemed to sleep, and he pulled up a stool and sat silently, holding her hand, until Eleanor came into the house and placed the baby into an empty trunk Jocelyn had prepared as a cradle.

Thomas released his wife
’s hand. “Mistress Dare, I must know. What evil did the savage woman commit in this house?”

Eleanor turned, a spark of fire in her eyes.
“Evil? Why none, sirrah! Though I’ve never seen anything like it, she cut Jocelyn with a sharpened shell and dug a hole. Together we propped her upright, and the baby came swiftly after that.”

Thomas crinkled his nose
. “And that smell?”

Eleanor shrugged.
“A paste to stop the bleeding. Nothing of importance, reverend, and nothing of evil.” She stood by the door a moment. “Shall I send Audrey?”

“
Yes,” the minister answered, wishing her gone. “Send her later.” When he heard the door close and latch behind him, he picked up his wife’s hand once again.

As Eleanor nursed Jocelyn
’s baby, Audrey nursed Jocelyn back to health. One lovely afternoon Eleanor sat outside with the baby under the sun-shot leaves of an oak tree. A medley of spring flowers bobbed in the gentle breeze, and the turquoise sky beyond the rim of the palisade seemed filled with gold radiance and the promise of prosperity. Covering herself modestly while the baby suckled, she spied the minister walking through the clearing.

“
Reverend, this baby must be named,” she called, glancing up at the preoccupied minister. “And we already have a Virginia, in honor of our virgin queen.”

Thomas came toward her and thrust his hand behind his back for a moment, then gave Eleanor a polite smile.
“Then this child shall be called Regina,” he said, “for she is a queen in her own right, and in a new country.”

Eleanor felt a twist of unreasonable jealousy.
‘Twas bad enough that Margery Harvie had given birth to a daughter only days after Eleanor, but now her own cousin’s baby had a name to rival Virginia’s. But her daughter, at least, was the governor’s granddaughter . . .

“
I have heard criticism that you allowed a savage to tend your wife,” Eleanor said, shifting the baby in her arms and adjusting the cloth covering that preserved her modesty. “They say you should have lain down before the door to keep the heathen out. They say your faith in God is small.”

Thomas gave her a smile that did not reach his eyes. “And what do you say, Mistress Dare?”

She tilted her head to look at him.
“I say you are ofttimes a fool for God,” she answered slowly, wondering if he would threaten her with hell fire for what surely amounted to blasphemy in his eyes. “But I recall that you sent me to fetch Ananias to save your wife, therefore you are not as foolish as I first thought. Howbeit, I cannot judge your faith.”

His jaw tightened.
“I have faith aplenty.” The words fairly hissed from between his clenched teeth. “Faith that God will punish evildoers. Faith that God will hold men accountable for their dark deeds. ‘Twas this faith, Mistress Dare, that convinced me that Jocelyn would die if left to me. For I am guilty, you see, and do not deserve a wife, or a child, and would not have them had your uncle and God himself not forced them upon me.”

Eleanor felt her blood run cold.
“Why?” she stammered, suddenly wishing she could escape him, but his strong gaze held her fast.

“
You would know why?” he asked, a confused and crazily furious light in his eye. He took a deep breath as if he would continue, but suddenly stopped and closed his eyes. Thirty seconds elapsed with neither sound nor movement from him, then he opened his eyes again and his mouth tipped in a faint smile.

“
You must excuse me, Mistress Dare. I am not myself these days.”

Eleanor said nothing, but studied him carefully.

“
I cry you mercy,” he cleared his throat. “I have accepted my situation. I will be a good husband to your cousin, a father to the child—”

“
A good husband? In truth, do you think you can call yourself that?” Eleanor watched his smile stiffen. “Jocelyn gives continually, sir, and receives very little from you. Yet she is devoted to you, she works harder than any woman in this village so that none may criticize her husband—”

Abruptly, he thrust his hand up, cutting her off.
“I cannot allow myself to kindle fires of love in her heart, for she would only be hurt.”

Eleanor gave him a brittle, one-sided smile.
“Don’t worry.” She rose to take the baby inside. “She is devoted, as I said. But she loves you not at all.”

Thirty-four

T
he disaster John White expected finally arrived on the fifth of May. Thirty leagues out of Madeira, a sixty-ton French ship from La Rochelle overtook the
Brave
. From the bridge, Arthur Facy made friendly overtures to the passing vessel, even inviting the captain aboard to share a bottle of wine. When White protested against wasting time in such a frivolous encounter, Facy rudely adjured him to go below and keep quiet.

White ignored the sounds of drinking and rioting above deck as the seamen cavorted.
His colonists huddled below in quiet groups, many of the men praying for God’s mercy for themselves and divine judgment upon the drunken crew. The women, who had seen more uncouth behavior in the past week than they had in their entire lives, sat with their eyes glued to their prayer books as Mistress Sampson read aloud.

As the passengers below watched the dark come on, the sounds of riotous partying finally ceased and the French ship pulled away at nightfall.
But on the morrow, as the
Brave
prepared to raise anchor and make sail, Facy was surprised by a round of cannon fire from the ship that had returned with its consort, a one hundred-ton warship. “What the devil?” Facy stammered, and White, who had come up the companionway, nodded in grim satisfaction. “They have taken your measure,” he said, throwing a dark glance of dislike toward the rheumy-eyed captain. “And they mean to have you for dinner, my friend.”

The French ships wasted no time as they closed in for the kill.
The English guns boomed in the
Brave’s
defense until the seamen ran out of powder; then the French sailors spilled like rats over their boarding nets and roamed the upper deck of the
Brave
at will. For more than an hour the sounds of hand-to-hand combat raged over the heads of the frightened colonists below decks, then several of the enemy streamed down the companionway and roared in delight at the sight of the quaking passengers cornered like animals in a slaughterhouse.

White directed the women to a hidden area behind a group of barrels and pulled his sword from its scabbard.
The fighting was fierce and not of his doing, but ‘twas time to fight or die.

Within an hour and a half after the enemies
’ boarding, the ship, crew, and passengers of the
Brave
lay firmly in the hands of the French. Twenty-three lay dead on the upper deck, among them the
Brave’s
first mate and master gunner. Three of the colonists were injured; a French sword had pierced one man nearly a dozen times.

White himself had been cut in the head twice, once by a sword and again by a pike.
He wiped blood from his head and tore a strip of cloth from the lining of his doublet to bandage his upper thigh where he had been shot. Limping badly, he stood with the surviving seamen and Arthur Facy on the upper deck to formally surrender.

In a group around the mainmast, the four women wept silently into their handkerchiefs as the French captain walked over the decks of the captive ship with an imperial air.
The English sailors in line with John White stood with their heads down, bloody and bowed. White glared at the conquering captain. The Frenchman would certainly order the execution of all English survivors since so many French lay dead and injured.

The captain
’s second-in-command walked behind him and caught White’s eye. Returning White’s glare, the man gave a furious speech to his commanding officer. The captain, White noted with relief, seemed not to care for the man’s words, but gave a simple order and gestured toward the line of English survivors. Another French sailor pointed to the after deck, and the English survivors were herded to the back of the vessel while the French seamen swarmed over the ship and began to carry away everything of value.

For the rest of the night and through the morning of the following day the French hauled away everything of value, including the passengers
’ personal belongings and the supplies intended for Virginia: food, barrels of wine and water, tools, copper utensils, maps, charts, even the sketches White had drawn in his idle hours at sea. Most disturbing was the abduction of Pedro Diaz, the ship’s pilot. Without Diaz, White knew the ship would never reach America.

In their haste to strip the
Brave
, the French sailors overloaded their shallops, sinking one and severely damaging another. White breathed a sigh of relief when the French were forced to cease their plunder while the
Brave
still had her sails, cables, anchors, and ordnance. If they had taken any more, the
Brave
would have been only a helpless floating hulk.

While the French ship sailed away, the remaining crew and passengers of the English vessel bound their wounds
and began to repair the rigging. The women mended the sails while the men recaulked splintered beams. After three days the English ship gingerly edged her way back to Bideford. They arrived on the twenty-second of May, exactly one month after leaving. To White’s sharp disappointment, the
Roe
arrived back in port a few weeks later.