Cate of the Lost Colony Read online

  The queen was peering at me. “You loved her, did you not?” she asked.

  “Your … Majesty?” I said in some confusion.

  “You know whom I mean.” Her voice was not unkind. “You gave this to her.”

  She held up a handkerchief with her initials in the corner. It was the very one she had given me, the one I then gave to Catherine when she visited my library. Had I loved her? The real question was, did I have the courage that Catherine had, to admit my love?

  I chose my words with care. “Your Majesty, I have loved—”

  She held up her hand, interrupting me. “Never mind. Do not answer me. That was long ago.” Then she pressed the handkerchief into my hand. “Take it and give it to her again.”

  She spoke as if Lady Catherine were in the next room. I looked into her eyes for signs of debility, but those bright lights, enfolded now in tiny wrinkles, showed no signs of an aged mind.

  “Now you jest with me, Your Grace. Truly I deserve your reproof and even your scorn, but—”

  “I do not jest.” Her voice was sharp. “I give you the opportunity—nay, I command you—to right a wrong that I regret.” She turned away from me. “I banished her for nothing more than loving you.”

  I stood motionless, amazed by this confession.

  When Elizabeth glanced back at me, her eyes were moist. “Which was no great wrong, or if it was, the greatest have been guilty of it, too.”

  Was she admitting her love for me as well as her sorrow for injuring Catherine? Oh, what did it even matter? Like a gift were the words that fell from her lips.

  “I cannot let those brave people perish. Sir Walter, I will release your ships, and you may use them to supply my colonists.”

  I sank to my knees and with choice words declared her graciousness. Then the thought of my nemesis gave me pause. “Walsingham will try to stop me,” I said.

  The queen pressed her lips tightly together. “Walsingham is not the king! I am sovereign here, and I declare his unreasoning envy shall no longer hinder your enterprise. I will give out that I have sent you back to Ireland because you displeased me. But in fact you will sail to Virginia secretly. There you will ensure it is duly governed and return with a report. John White may accompany you. No one will know about the voyage but the three of us.”

  For a moment I was stunned that the queen would act without the knowledge and approval of her ministers. And yet I saw the wisdom of it. If they learned of the voyage, she could disavow any knowledge of it and claim I stole away against her wishes.

  “When you return with the news that the colony thrives and the Indians have been civilized and converted to the true religion, even Walsingham will hail you as a hero.”

  What a tantalizing thought! “And the Lady Catherine?” I ventured to ask. “After I give her the handkerchief, what shall I do?”

  I saw my mistress hesitate. Her long hands fluttered. Then they rested and she fixed me with her clear, bright stare.

  “Bring her home, and she can be yours.”

  Chapter 36

  Orphaned

  In Nantioc I had dreamed of returning to the familiar comforts of Fort Ralegh. I planned to make peace with Eleanor and never again let a foolish disagreement threaten our relationship. Had we not become almost like sisters? I imagined the rejoicing that would greet our safe return, the stories we would have to tell. All those dreams evaporated like dew from the grass when we walked into the half-abandoned village where despair and the smell of death hung in the air.

  Ananias was overcome by the loss of Eleanor. He hid his face and wept, his whole body shaking. Alice Chapman’s keening rent the air when she learned her husband had been killed. To my own grief was added guilt, for I had failed to keep my promise to John White to watch over his daughter.

  Though Ananias urged him to stay, Manteo left Fort Ralegh to rebuild alliances among the native peoples. This, he said, would benefit us. But I think it pained him to see how desperate we had become, how fallen from our first hopes. I watched him go, regretting that I had not properly thanked him for rescuing us. I was afraid he would rebuke me, for in my heart I felt our late misfortunes had all sprung from my foolish insistence on going to Dasemunkepeuc.

  In his absence, I found I missed Manteo. I felt as if new dangers were imminent and I was unprotected. Betty and I were the objects of much curiosity, but I did not want to discuss my sojourn in Nantioc. I could not boast about how well we had been treated while our fellow colonists had been sick and dying, abandoned by those who fled to Chesapeake. Nor could I make them understand why Jane had decided to stay with Tameoc. Even Alice Chapman was horrified by that.

  With the departure of Roger Bailey and his party to Chesapeake, we were like a body cut in half. There were only eighteen men left in the village, plus three boys barely able to grow a beard. To them fell the task of defending us all. Day and night Georgie Howe patrolled the towers like a lumbering ghost.

  “They will come back someday and take Georgie with them. Did they go where my papa went? All of them into the cold ground? George is cold out here,” he said over and over.

  Thus as our second year on Roanoke Island began, misery settled in like a grim lodger. Not since my father’s death had I felt so hopeless. The weeks spent in the Tower, the long sea crossing, even the captivity in Nantioc were like child’s games compared to the hardships we would face if another winter passed without ships bringing relief. It was men that we needed most—to work and to protect the fort, then women for their companionship, and finally animals to raise for meat.

  October threw its brazen cloak over the landscape; the leaves drifted from the branches like a million lost hopes scattered on the ground. Corn and pumpkins and sunflower seeds had to be picked, openauk dug from the ground. The abundance mocked us, so few in number. We stored the harvest in a cellar dug beneath the armory, precious as the few firearms that remained, since Bailey took most of them to Chesapeake. He had promised to return for the rest of the colonists, but as the months passed that promise began to look like a lie. One day I admitted to Betty I hoped they had all perished.

  “Perhaps they have, and it was God’s will. But take heart, for we have been preserved,” she said.

  “Our preservation was Manteo’s doing, not God’s. I think God and England both have abandoned us,” I said.

  But Betty’s faith, despite her ordeal, was unshaken. “The Bible says not even a sparrow falls without His knowledge, yet man is more precious to Him than a sparrow.”

  Her complacency irked me. “Our lives were lately held rather cheap, exchanged for a single musket each,” I reminded her. “The food stored in the armory and guarded day and night is more valuable than any one of us. I am worth less than a handful of empty shells.” I thought sadly of Eleanor lying in the cold ground.

  “But you are alive! Therefore, thank the Lord.”

  Betty tried to encourage me, but hope was hard to come by. November brought cold, sharp rain and two more deaths. The men were so few and so weakened by illness that many tasks went neglected. Ananias was too despondent to lead us. By December the firewood was all depleted and Ambrose Vickers sent out men to cut more. Some of the houses leaked and needed repairs. Alice and her baby came to live in the governor’s house for the sake of thrift. We tried to keep one another from becoming fearful or dispirited.

  There was reason to be afraid, for Indians had been spotted lurking in the underbrush nearby. In small bands of three or four, they shot arrows over the palisade, but fortunately these fell harmless to the ground. They ran away when the soldiers fired their muskets. It was Thomas Graham who realized their intention was to provoke us to waste our ammunition. So he ordered the guards not to fire unless the Indians came too near, and he had all the grass and shrubs cut down within thirty feet of the palisade, giving them nowhere to hide. We carried buckets of water from the bay and kept them beside our doors, in the event the Indians aimed burning arrows at the thatched roofs. I wished Manteo were with us
, for he might be able to persuade them to stop troubling us.

  One December night I was roused by the squawking of hens, and my heart pounded with the certainty that we were being attacked. I listened, dreading to hear whooping and the crackling of flames on the roof. But the intruder was only a wolf that had found a gap in the palisade and slunk into the henhouse. Graham shot the wolf and the dogs quickly devoured the carcass. But a dozen chickens were dead. And before the hole could be repaired—a difficult task, for the blacksmith had gone to Chesapeake and taken all the nails—three pigs escaped and only one could be recovered. Then rats got into the seed corn and ruined half of it. Like lifeblood seeping from a sick patient, our means of survival were trickling away.

  Then in the deep of winter, on a night so cold that Alice and I slept in a single bed with her baby and Virginia between us, Indians did attack. Ananias heard them first and woke us, then ran out to raise the alarm. We hid under the bed, and I nearly smothered Virginia in my attempt to keep her from crying out. The skirmish was brief, the gunshots and screeching soon fading to silence. Running outside without regard for the cold, I learned the intruders had scaled the palisade and entered the fort undetected, where they pillaged the armory for food. Two of the guards had been asleep, leaving Georgie Howe to fight them alone. He took an arrow in the leg. By the laws of the colony, the two guards should have been charged with a crime. But there was no one to administer justice, for Ananias Dare, the last of John White’s assistants, had been killed by a single arrow that pierced his throat.

  Virginia Dare, the first English child born in this New World only sixteen months ago, was now an orphan. She could barely say “Mama” when her mother died, and now “Papa” was gone, too. Soon she would remember neither of them. I knew, for the memories of my father were already growing faint, and those of my mother were even dimmer.

  The child, as if sensing her loss, toddled over to Alice and plucked at her bodice.

  Alice shook her head sadly. “You have been weaned, little one. I have no more milk for you.”

  “Come here, Virginia,” I said, and held open my arms.

  With a chubby fist thrust into her mouth, the trusting child came to me and put her head in my lap. I parted her tangled curls with my fingers. I had promised John White I would care for Eleanor, and I had failed. I would not fail his grandchild. My chest hurt with love for little Virginia and fear for her uncertain future.

  “You will be mine now,” I said. “You must call me ‘Mama Cate.’ ” With those words, my melancholy began to fade and a fierce determination took its place. My life might be cheap, but this child was worth more than all the food and weapons and copper and pearls in the New World. Come what may, I would put her life before anything.

  And that meant that I, too, must be a survivor.

  Chapter 37

  Leaving the Island

  I began to view Roanoke Island as a prison surrounded not by high walls but by impassable waters. We had no means to leave the island even if we knew how to find Chesapeake, even if travel in the winter were not so beset with risk. It would be spring before a ship could reach us or one of the shallops return from Chesapeake. There were days when I was convinced that neither would ever come.

  Snow blanketed the village, muffling all sound and confining us to our houses. To keep my mind occupied, I began writing again, using the empty pages from John White’s journals. I wrote about the brave journey of Ananias and Eleanor Dare, so one day Virginia could read about her parents and be proud of them. I described my captivity in Nantioc and my relationships with the Croatoan women. Most likely my account would never be published. Most likely I would never build my own house in Chesapeake, deal in dried tobacco, or introduce Indian designs to Londoners. I could scarcely have said what I did hope for, as the future seemed as bleak and featureless as the open sea.

  And the past? It was as lost to me as were my own parents. The queen’s court was a setting that belonged to someone else’s story, not mine. I doubted Emme would even recognize me if I should reappear there. And Sir Walter, his letters and poems, his touch, the handkerchief—all were like pieces of a dream that scattered as soon as I awoke. What color were his eyes? What had civet smelled like? Or the lavender and rosewater that ladies perfumed themselves with? The queen—had she forgiven me? Had Sir Walter forgotten me? The present had a way of declining those questions, saying instead, Here is the place where you now must live.

  We were still in the cold grip of winter when Manteo returned to Fort Ralegh. He had come by sledge and canoe, bringing six men with him, a brace of waterfowl, and a creel of fish. I felt hope stir in me, not only because of the food, but also to see Manteo again. It was like the promise of spring when winter has begun to seem eternal.

  I gathered the women to cook the fowl and fish and to bake cakes out of flour and ground walnuts. We carried the food to the armory, where the remnant of our colony and the natives feasted together. While the English sat at trestle tables and used trenchers and spoons, the Indians seated themselves on the ground and ate with their fingers. Manteo hesitated, sat at the table, and began to eat with his fingers. It made me smile to see how he had chosen a middle path.

  Georgie Howe sat with the Indians, imitating their manner of eating. Fortunately, he did not connect these men with the death of his father. But some of the colonists were uneasy in the Indians’ presence. They stared at the faces marked with paint and ritual scars; the hair, long on one side and shorn on the other; and the motley mantles sewn from animal skins. But everyone ate the food Manteo had brought, for we were hungry.

  Because we had no governor or assistants, Ambrose Vickers made himself our spokesman. But he was blunt and unused to diplomacy. When the meal was done, he stood up with his arms akimbo and addressed Manteo loudly.

  “We must know why you have come. What do you want from us now?”

  I feared Manteo and his party would take offense at Ambrose’s rough manner. Manteo did not reply at once but regarded all our company with a look of dismay, even sadness.

  “We have no men or weapons to spare,” continued Ambrose. He looked at Graham, who shook his head in confirmation.

  I beckoned Ambrose from the table and whispered to him. “Let us be careful not to displease him after all he has done for us. First, express our gratitude for the food.”

  Ambrose threw up his hands. “I know we ought to thank him, but I’ll be damned if I know how. I’m a woodworker, not an orator.”

  “Then will you allow me to speak on our behalf?”

  Ambrose glanced again at Graham, who nodded once. Griffen Jones, the Welsh farmer, frowned, then shrugged his consent. Though he was of mean status, his opinion was valued by the men.

  “Speak, then,” Ambrose said grudgingly. “It may not be proper, you being a woman, but it’s necessary.”

  Recalling how John White had treated his Indian visitors, I had Graham place two chairs before the fire. I sat in one and offered Manteo the other. Two of his men flanked him, and Ambrose and Jones stood beside my chair.

  “Lord Manteo, we greet you as a faithful ally and welcome you to Fort Ralegh,” I said in English, then added in Algonkian, “Do not take offense, for none was intended. Ambrose Vickers is grateful to have his wife back, and I also thank you for my deliverance and for this food.”

  Spoken in a rush, those words left me short of breath. I folded my hands in my lap. The armchair was too big for me and I felt like a child playing at being a queen. The color rose to my cheeks, whether from the nearness of the fire or the excitement of my role I could not say.

  “I am pleased to be among you again,” Manteo said.

  I could feel his eyes on me. To parley with him, I would have to meet his gaze as a man would. So I looked into his face, which was familiar to me but, after several months, somehow new and remarkable. His nose was straight, his mouth and the bones of his cheeks wide. The tawny hue of his skin pleased me. He was handsome, though not in the manner of Englishmen. Hi
s eyes were so dark they were almost black. To my surprise I was not afraid to look into them. No, I even wanted to see behind them, to see within Manteo himself.

  I tried to rein in my wandering thoughts and organize some fitting words to speak. What would Elizabeth say to one of her foreign princes to discern his purpose and gain his trust?

  First, because I longed to know her fate, I asked after Jane Pierce, and Manteo said she had given birth to a son, whom Tameoc treated as his own. The news made me glad. I could not see how the others reacted, but I spoke on behalf of their better natures.

  “We are pleased and hope for greater fellowship between our people,” I said. “Nantioc remains at peace, then?”

  Manteo nodded. “With Tameoc’s help I have made an alliance between the people of Nantioc and the Croatoan. Those who followed Wanchese have scattered,” he said, spreading his hands for emphasis.

  While murmurs of relief ran through the small assembly, Manteo lowered his voice. “Tell me what has happened here.”

  I realized our appearance must be startling. We were thin, hollow-eyed with hunger, and our clothes hung in rags. Vainly I hoped I did not look quite so miserable as the others.

  “Our circumstances are worse than when you left us last summer,” I said. “Our food stores were plundered. Ananias Dare has been slain by Indians. And due to sickness there are but two dozen of us remaining.”

  “And you, Ladi-cate. Have you suffered too?” The gentle tone of his voice caught me by surprise.

  “Not as much as I deserved,” I said, glancing away.

  “Your ordeal was not your fault,” he said.

  I knew he meant my ordeal of captivity. For months I had wished for an opportunity to show my gratitude to Manteo. Now it had come. “I thank you that I did not become Wanchese’s wife,” I said. The remembrance of that day returned to me: Manteo lying motionless on the ground, covered with blood, then finally stirring to life. My curiosity had to be satisfied, and I asked, “Did you kill him for my sake only? And why did you call me ‘Moon Maiden’?”