Roanoke (The Keepers of the Ring) (5 page)

Carriage wheels churned the gravel outside the house and Audrey leapt to her feet. “I
’ll see if the carriage is outside,” she said, eager to exit the uncomfortable leave-taking.

Robert nodded, then rose and stood over his sleeping daughter. The slender gold band shone on her right hand, and he held her palm to his heart and breathed a prayer for his daughter
’s happiness as a veil of tears obscured the lovely vision from his eyes.

Five

J
ocelyn was moving, rolling, flying, floating, sinking on a dark bed that had neither form nor substance. Muffled noises reached her ears and faded away: the pebbly clatter from wheels upon a road, a murmur of voices, odd wind-borne sounds. Her lips and throat were parched, then someone placed a cup to her mouth and she drank thirstily until blackness surrounded her again.

A soft breeze blew past her cheek. She slowly became aware of the sound of men
’s voices, the creak and groan of wood, and the flap of canvas. She felt rough wool beneath her hands, and linen against her cheek. Her eyelids were heavy, unable to open, and a palpable unease enfolded her. Was she ill? Was she dead?

In time, the fog lifted, and Jocelyn opened her eyes. She lay on a straw-stuffed mattress in a small room with open windows in one wall. Audrey sat on a stool near the door, her head buried in a book.

“Audrey?” The maid jumped. “Och, Miss Jocelyn, how you gave me a start! How are you feeling?”

Jocelyn sat up and raised her hand to block out the bright sunlight as a sharp stabbing pain ripped through her head. “Oh! My head hurts. Where are we?” She lowered her hand to look out the windows, but from the edge of the windowsill to the horizon there was nothing to see but water and blue sky.

Audrey lowered her book and took a deep breath. “We’re aboard the
Lion
, Miss Jocelyn, your Uncle John’s ship. He put ye in his cabin ‘till ye woke, then we’re to join Mistress Eleanor with the other passengers.”

“Passengers? Surely we
’re not—”

Audrey didn
’t answer, but she didn’t need to. The truth hit Jocelyn like a slap in the face, and her blood rose in a jet. Her father had betrayed her! Uncle John, Eleanor, Audrey, the lot of them! They had placed her on a ship to Virginia regardless of her wishes, and had undoubtedly drugged her in order to accomplish their treacherous deed.

She rose to her unsteady feet and opened the cabin door. “Uncle John!” she screamed, not caring who heard her on the deck beyond. “John White! Where is he?”

A grizzled sailor passing by the doorway gave her a lecherous wink and Jocelyn was suddenly aware of her loose hair and disheveled appearance. What must the ship’s crew be thinking? Had she been brought aboard in a sailor’s arms like a drunken strumpet?

“Oh!” she cried, humiliation stinging her. She darted back inside the cabin and slammed the door, then covered her scarlet face with her hands. “What have they done?” she cried, angry tears scalding her fingers. “Audrey, why did you let them do this to me?”

“Nobody’s done a thing to ye, so I can’t imagine what you are thinking,” Audrey protested, lifting her chin at Jocelyn’s accusation. “Your father is dying, Miss, and he wanted ye to leave him in peace. Your uncle sent his carriage, and he carried ye aboard himself early this afternoon. You’ve been sleeping like a baby, with no one to bother ye. We’re going to Virginia, we are, with Mistress Eleanor and a fine group of folk, and I’ve been sitting right here by your side though I’m perishing with hunger and dying for a little company, if ye take me meaning.”

Jocelyn listened in amazement to Audrey
’s speech, then fell back on the mattress as her thoughts raced. Maybe they had succeeded in bringing her aboard, but they couldn’t keep her drugged until they reached Virginia! If the ship put in at any other port, or if any other passengers were to come aboard, then surely she could find a way to leave!

She sat up abruptly and smoothed her dress. “Have you a brush, Audrey?” she asked, coiling her unruly long hair with her hands. “Help me look presentable, will you? I
’m sure you don’t want to stay in this tiny cabin any longer than you have to.”

“Well, now, I knew you
’d come around, didn’t I say so to your uncle?” Audrey answered, leaping up. “Sorry, Miss, I don’t have a brush, but I’d be glad to braid your hair or something—”

“Beshrew my hair, let it hang,” Jocelyn snapped, moving past her maid toward the door. There had to be a way to leave this ship, and she intended to find it. Just because she was a girl, and only seventeen, did not mean she could be shipped to Virginia like a bundle of excess baggage.

When she and Audrey made their way from John White’s cabin to the main deck, Jocelyn was surprised to find the ship under full sail. A crew of able seamen worked the sails and climbed the rigging, and the ship slipped easily through the blue green waters of the English Channel. The blinding dazzle of the sun’s path on the quiet sea held many of her fellow passengers enthralled on the deck, but Jocelyn slipped carefully among the collected knots of strangers as she searched for her uncle. She would demand to be set ashore at the first opportunity. He had to see her point of view.

A seaman finally told her John White was “aft, on the poopdeck,” and she found her uncle on an elevated deck at the stern of the ship. He did not acknowledge her when she and Audrey climbed to meet him, for he was engaged in a heated argument with a small, dark-haired man with an unmistakable Portuguese accent. Deliberately ignoring all she had been taught about respect for her elders (for how had stowing her aboard this ship shown respect for
her
?), Jocelyn marched boldly between the two men and turned to face her uncle.

“Uncle John, I would speak with you,” she said, steeling her voice with resolution. Her uncle gave her a distracted, “not now” look and pointed a finger in the small man
’s direction, but Jocelyn would not be ignored. “Uncle John, I
demand
to know where we are going. If we are making a stop, I insist that you put me ashore. I want to return home. You had no right to bring me here without my leave.”

She heard the Portuguese snicker behind her as her uncle
’s face clouded in anger. In that moment she realized how she appeared to him—a mere upstart of a girl, a penniless niece who had dared to swagger into the midst of an argument and command his attention—but then familial affection gleamed in his eyes and he patted her shoulder. “Jocelyn, my dear, go find Eleanor and keep her company. I’ll talk to you later.”

“But Uncle John,” she felt silly stamping her foot, but she did it anyway, “I must go home!”

From the corner of her eye she saw the Portuguese lean forward to glance at her face, then he turned away to allow her a moment of privacy with her uncle.

“Jocelyn, you can
’t go home. Today we cross the Solent to the Isle of Wight. I have business at Cowes with Sir George Carey, who wants to use our new colony as a privateering base.”

“After that, can I go home?”

“No, child.” His glance softened as he looked at her. “We’ll return to Portsmouth to pick up a few late-arriving colonists and more supplies. But you cannot go home. Your father wishes you to remain with me.”

“If we
’re returning to Portsmouth, I want to go home.”

“
‘Tis impossible. Now be a good girl and go find your cousin.”

“
‘Tis not impossible.” She nodded in conviction, but her voice quavered as she thought of the resolution in her father’s eyes when he placed her mother’s ring in her hand. He had known then that he would send her away!

She clutched at her uncle
’s sleeve and injected a note of pleading into her voice. “I want to go home, Uncle John. Papa needs me, and I cannot leave him. By all that’s merciful, Uncle, you must let me go. Papa is your brother, and he has no one to tend him. If ‘twere Eleanor dying, or even having the baby—” she intensified her whisper, “—would you not want to be at her side? Have mercy, uncle, and let me go home.”

“Your devotion is most praiseworthy, madam,” the Portuguese said, turning to face her. His grin was an open and shameless confession of his eavesdropping, but he turned to John White and Jocelyn felt hope rise in her heart. “Let the lady return to her father if she chooses.”

John White’s expression gentled. “If you still want to leave us when we return to Portsmouth, I will not stop you,” he said finally, his voice heavy with disappointment.

Far from satisfied, Jocelyn followed Audrey into the bowels of the ship through a series of steep and narrow stairways the sailors called “companionways.” There were at least four decks under the main upper deck, Audrey told
Jocelyn. The upper deck was reserved for the seamen who worked the ship; the deck under that was for the passengers. Below the passenger deck was a deck for cooking and the storage of cargo, and at the bottom of the ship, barrels of water, food, and stone for ballast jammed the orlop deck.

Jocelyn did not care to tour the ship, for she had no intention of remaining on it for more than a voyage to Cowes and the return to Portsmouth. When Audrey led her to Eleanor, though, Jocelyn felt her anger soften. She could not be angry at her uncle and cousin once she saw how badly Eleanor fared on the ship.

Her vivacious cousin lay curled on a stuffed mattress, her skin a sickly gray-green. Agnes Wood sat devoutly beside her, her expression screwed into a sour snarl, but her face cracked into humanity as she tried to explain Eleanor’s condition. “‘Tis seasickness,” Agnes said when Jocelyn looked at her cousin in horror. “Master Ananias said ‘twill pass once we reach the open sea. ‘Tis only the harbors that are so choppy.”

Jocelyn didn
’t have the heart to remind Agnes that they would be in the harbor for many days to come, so she sank onto the wooden floor next to Eleanor. “I don’t know which of us is sorrier to be here,” she said, trailing her hand over her cousin’s glistening brow. “Mayhap you should come off the ship with me when we return to Portsmouth. Let your father and husband go to Virginia without you.”

Despite her weakness and nausea, Eleanor
’s pale blue eyes flew open in protest. “Leave?” she croaked, struggling to raise her head. “Why, never, cousin! I couldn’t leave my husband. Ananias isn’t—well, I won’t leave him. This is only something to be borne, and I bore the sickness gladly enough when I was first with child. ‘Tis just—” she paused and gestured frantically toward her maid. Agnes expertly pulled her mistress’ head toward a low basin while Jocelyn turned away.

Why had her father put her aboard this living purgatory? She could not wait to be rid of it.

When Eleanor lay quiet again, Jocelyn looked down at her cousin and was surprised to find a brave smile on the elder girl’s face. “Ananias was granted a coat of arms before we left, did you know that?” she whispered. “All of Papa’s assistants were given them by the royal Garter King of Arms. My children will be gentlemen and ladies, not middling folk.”

“I thought all men were to be equal in your new city,” Jocelyn answered, not caring that her remark sounded less than charitable.

Eleanor’s smile twitched. “And so they will be. But gentle men will always be gentlemen. And I’m glad Ananias is a bricklayer, for his skill will be sorely needed. Do you think the gentry can sit around all day and let the city build itself? Papa says the men of Raleigh must be men of ability, and my Ananias will be one of the best.”

“I
’m sorry to upset you,” Jocelyn answered, genuinely contrite. She patted Eleanor’s hand. “My head hurts horribly, and I can’t stop thinking about my father. At first I was angry to find myself here, but when I think of how sincerely Papa wanted me to leave, I am even more desperate to return to him.”

Eleanor grimaced as a new wave of nausea hit her. “Are you sure you won
’t stay with us?” she whimpered, clutching her stomach. “I need you, coz.”

Jocelyn gave Eleanor a sympathetic smile. “My father needs me more.”

John White stalked into his cabin and slammed the door behind him. Roger Bailie, his chief assistant, winced at the noise, then smoothed his face and returned his attention to the parchment on the small table that served as the governor’s desk.

At sixty, Roger Bailie was one of the oldest colonists to make the journey, but he had been a devoted friend to John White for years. He stood five feet two inches tall, had sincere blue eyes, and was completely bald but for two hanks of blonde hair tied together at the nape of his neck. His chief attributes, White had discovered, were his loyalty and attention to detail.

“A plague on that Portuguese!” White shouted, flinging his hat against the wall of the cabin. “He argues with every decision I make. I am the governor of this colony, hence the commander of this expedition, but because he is master of this ship I am thwarted at every turn! I don’t care how good a pilot he is, Raleigh was a fool to entrust the ship to him.”

“What has Master Simon Fernandes done now?” Bailie asked, looking up from his parchment.

“Nothing that need concern you,” White mumbled, sinking onto his narrow bed in frustration. He had tried to keep his suspicions to himself, but with every hour that passed he became more and more convinced that the Portuguese navigator was a traitor at best, and a spy for the Spanish at worst.

“You don
’t know him like I do,” White said, folding his hands across his chest. “I’ve sailed with the braggart before. The last time, Fernandes endangered our entire fleet and ran aground through sheer carelessness one of Her Majesty’s largest ships at Roanoke Island. Fernandes cares nothing for the colony or the colonists. His ambitions are centered around privateering and whatever treasure and goods he can pluck from Spanish and French vessels who are unlucky enough to cross his path.”