Virgin Earth

Summer 1645, Virginia

John thought that the life at the new village in the creeks would become easier once the crops yielded and the hunting improved, and the fruits were ripe in the forest. When the good weather came there was indeed enough food for everyone; but the easy contentment of the old village life was lost. They dug out a pit and built a new sweat lodge, and dedicated a new dancing circle. They built a grain store and the women made the tall, smooth black jars to hold the dried peas and seeds and maize which would see them through the winter; but the joy that John had thought was inseparable from the Powhatan had gone from them. Expelled from the land where they had chosen to live, and confined to the brackish waters near the shoreline, they were like a people who had lost their confidence and their pride.

They had never thought that they could be defeated by the colonists, or if they thought they could lose, they thought it would be in a great battle, and the braves would lie dead in heaps, and the women would grieve and take their men home and weep over their bodies. Then a price would be paid – the orphans and the widows would disappear into Jamestown and not be seen again and the Powhatan would grieve for them too, as among the lost. Then, after a season, after a cycle of the year, everything would return to normal.

What they had not anticipated was that the war would never stop. What they had not anticipated was that it would not be a battle and a withdrawal of either one side or the other. What they had not anticipated, and John had not thought to warn them against, was the inveteracy of English spite against a native people which takes arms against them.

The colonists were not driven by fear, it was no longer a matter of self-defense. The army of half-naked yelling warriors which had come against them had melted away, disappeared back into the woods. The colonists were fueled instead by a deep sense of outrage and moral righteousness. Ever since the first uprising they had felt that the Indians had escaped punishment, had been pushed back into the woods but not pushed far enough. Even when they had built the wooden palisade to mark the limit of their tolerance of the native people, they had thought that too much land had been left to them. Now, under Sir William Berkeley, there was talk of “solving” the Indian question. In these terms of speech the families of the Powhatan were now defined as a problem that had to be solved, and not as a people with rights.

Once that shift of thinking took place there could be only one conclusion, and John understood the determination of the colonists who marched out in expedition after expedition to hunt down first one village and then another until it felt as if the trees had ceased to hide the Powhatan, and the leaves ceased to shelter them, as if the colonists could see through the branches and the morning mist, and wherever there was one of the People, a man, a woman or a child, a musket ball would find them.

And then the news came that Opechancanough had been captured. John went to find Attone by the river. He was not fishing, nor sharpening a bow. He was not chipping at the blade of a stone knife, nor tying an intricate knot to flight an arrow. He was standing, uncharacteristically idle, his hands limp at his sides, watching the light on the sluggish water of the river as it lapped at the pebbles at his feet.

“The white men have taken Opechancanough,” John said.

Attone did not turn his head. He had heard John approach from half a mile away and known from the sound of the footsteps that it was John, and that he was looking for someone.

“Yes.”

“I was thinking, should I go into Jamestown and ask them to spare his life?”

Attone turned his bright dark gaze on John. “Would they spare him if you asked it?”

“I don’t know. They might. At least I could speak up for him. I thought I should go to them and explain what the Powhatan believe. At the very least I could make sure that they understand what Opechancanough is saying.”

Attone nodded. “Yes. Go.”

John stepped forward and stood beside the man, shoulder to shoulder. “I have loved you like a brother,” he said suddenly.

Attone flashed him a quick look and at the back of it was a smile. “Yes.”

“I didn’t think it would end here, like this.”

The Powhatan shook his head, his gaze returning to the moving water. “I didn’t think it either, Englishman.”

“You call me Englishman because I am no longer of the People,” John stated, hoping to be contradicted.

Attone simply nodded.

John summoned his resolve. “Then I will go into Jamestown and plead for his life, and then I will go back to England. I know that there is no place for me with the People anymore, and the food I eat robs the hungry men and women.”

“It is time that you went back to your own people. There is nothing for you here.”

“I would stay if Suckahanna asked me-”

Again there was that dark flash and a half-concealed smile. “You might as well wait for the deer to speak, Englishman. She has turned her head from you, she will not look back.”

“Because of her pride?”

Attone nodded. “Now she is a Powhatan,” he said.

“When I am gone will you tell her that I loved her?” John asked. “And that I went because I believed she wanted me gone. Tell her it was not uncertainty, and not knowing where I belonged. Will you tell her that my whole heart was with her?”

Attone shook his head, a lazy gesture. “I will tell her that you loved her as much as a man like you can love.”

“What would a man like you do?” John cried out in frustration. “If you’re saying that my love is less – what would your love be like? What would you do?”

Attone laughed at that. “Oh! Beat her, I suppose. Love her. Give her a baby to care for. Send her out in the fields to work. Bring her home at night and keep her awake all the night with lovemaking until she is too tired to do anything but sleep. Don’t ask me, Eagle, she left me for you. If I knew how to manage her she would never have married you.”

John laughed unwillingly. “But you will tell her that I love her?”

“Oh go, Englishman,” Attone said, suddenly weary of the whole thing. “I will tell her the words if I can remember them, but we have no interest in words. And words from Englishmen mean less than nothing. You are a faithless race, and you talk too much. Go and see if your talking can save Opechancanough and then go back to your people. Your time here with us is finished.”

John washed himself clean in the river but the paleness of his skin seemed stained forever by the redness of the bear grease. He asked Musses to cut his hair for him, in a short crop, the same length on both sides, so that he no longer had the side plait of the Powhatan braid. She did it neatly, with two sharpened oyster shells, and gathered up the fallen locks and threw them on the fire.

“Going home?” she asked.

“I have nowhere else to go,” John replied, hoping for sympathy.

“Good-bye,” she said pleasantly and walked away.

John rose up from her fire, took a knife and his bow and arrow and went to find Suckahanna. She was at a corner of the camp, a deerskin strung taut on the curing frame; she was rubbing oil into the skin to keep it supple and sweet.

“I am going to Jamestown to speak for Opechancanough,” John said.

She nodded.

“After, I shall take a ship for England.”

She nodded again.

“I may never come back,” he warned.

The tiniest of shrugs greeted that remark and she turned around and tipped some more oil into her palm and worked it into the skin.

“Before I go, I want to tell you that I love you and that I am sorry for not being a true brave,” John said. “I know I have disappointed you; but I could not spill the blood of my countrymen. If we had found a way to live at peace, white men and Powhatan, then you and I would have been happy together. It is the times which failed us, Suckahanna. I know that I loved you then, and I love you still. Without fail.”

At last she paused in her work, she tossed her head and her black hair slid over her shoulder, and he saw the almost-forgotten sweetness of her smile.

“Go your way, Englishman,” she said. “You don’t snare me with words.”

“And you still love me,” John hazarded.

She gave him that swift, flirtatious, elusive smile. “Go away.”

It was a long way to Jamestown. John went northward along the shoreline. He lived off shellfish and berries and early ripening nuts, and occasionally he shot a bird for some meat. He thought it was ironic that now he was preparing to leave the country he had found that he could live off it and that it was the rich and fertile place of his wildest childhood imaginings.

For the first three days he trudged dully, like a London apprentice going to work, watching his feet on the stones of the shore, and looking around him only to check for enemies and to look for game. But on the third day he realized that just over the arid dunes was forest filled with trees and saplings and seeds coming into ripeness, and he left the shoreline, went into the forest and started collecting.

By the time he reached the James River he had made himself a satchel from two duckskins, which were not properly cleaned and were smelling powerfully, and stuffed it with seeds and roots. He approached the first plantation he saw with caution, he did not want to be shot as an Indian by a nervous planter. He saw the man down on his roughly built quay.

“Ahoy!” John called from the shelter of the forest. The English words felt strange on his tongue, for a moment he was afraid he had forgotten his own language.

The man turned to where the sound came from and raked the forest with his gaze. “Who’s there?”

“A friend, an Englishman. But buck-naked.”

The planter lifted his musket. John saw that the fuse was not glowing and the chances were good that it was out. He stepped out of the shelter of the woods.

“You’re an Indian dog! Stand still or I shoot you as you stand.”

“I promise,” John said. “I’m as English as you. I’m John Tradescant, gardener to the king of England, I have a house and a garden in Lambeth and a wife called Hester Pooks and a daughter called Frances and a son called Johnnie.” As he spoke the familiar, beloved names he felt a stirring as if they themselves were calling to him and he should have been listening, he should have heard them earlier.

“Then what are you doing like a savage in the woods?” the man asked, his gun pointed unwaveringly at John’s crotch.

John hesitated. Of course, that was the very question.

“Because I didn’t know where I should be,” he said slowly. Then he raised his voice and said loudly enough to be heard: “I was living with the Powhatan, but now I want to go back to England. Can I borrow some clothing and take a boat to Jamestown? I can get money sent to me there, and repay you.”

The man motioned him forward and John stepped cautiously closer. “What’s the name of the new Parliament commander?” the man asked him quickly.

John spread his hands. “I don’t know. I’ve been with the Powhatan for the last two years. When I left the king was defeated at Edgehill – I thought it would not be long for him then.”

The man laughed shortly. “It still is not decided now,” he said. “What’s the name of the king’s cousin?”

“Prince Rupert?”

“His son?”

“Prince Charles?”

“Nationality of his wife?”

“She’s French, I can tell you the color of her eyes,” John said. “I was in court service, I was gardener at Oatlands Palace.”

The man checked. “You were gardener to the queen of England and here you are as naked as a savage after running wild two years with the Powhatan?”

John stepped forward and held out his hand. “Odd, isn’t it? I’m John Tradescant, of the Ark, Lambeth.”

They loaned John a pair of breeches and a coarse linen shirt and he crammed his feet into a pair of shoes that should have been the right size but which pinched his feet unbearably. Running barefoot for two years had hardened the skin and spread the bones of his feet, John feared he would never walk comfortably in boots or shoes again.

A tobacco ship called in at the quay to load their crop the next day and John sent a note to Hester at Lambeth and packed his seeds and roots into a watertight barrel addressed to her.

Dear Wife,

I hope this reaches you in good health and fortune. I am on my way to Jamestown after many months living in the forest. I have no money. Please send a note of credit for me to draw twenty pounds for my board and lodging and journey home. I shall come home as soon as I receive the money.

John flinched a little at the bareness of the note but he did not feel he could, in all conscience, offer any explanation or any reassurance of love. He feared that perhaps Hester would be hard-pressed to find twenty pounds to pay into a London goldsmith so that the note of credit could be good in Virginia, but he could not bring himself to offer advice as to what she might sell from the collection. He had been too long away. He did not know if she had been able to keep the collection safe. He did not even know for certain that she was still at the Lambeth address. He felt as if he were pitching a rope into darkness and hoping that someone on an unseen quayside might catch it and haul him in. He paused before signing his name. If anyone would haul him in, it would be Hester.

I trust you, Hester, and when I come home I shall thank you for your care of me and mine.

He signed his name and ran down to the wooden pier and thrust the note at the captain. “Please see that she receives it,” he said. “I am trapped here unless she can send me my fare home.” He looked at the ship. “Unless I could work a passage?”

The captain laughed in his face. “Work your passage? You’re a seaman, are you?”

“No,” John said.

“If you want to go home, mister, you’ll have to pay for your voyage, same as anyone.”

“She’ll reward you for bringing the note,” John promised him. “Please see that she receives it.”

The captain tucked it carelessly into his jacket. “Oh aye,” he said and shouted to the sailors to let go.

The current of the river caught the ship and she pulled away from the quayside. John watched the sails unfurl and heard the shouted orders and the creaks of the rope and timbers as the ship got under way.

“How long before you hear?” the planter asked him.

“It can’t be quicker than four months,” John said. “A voyage there and back, if she has the money, that is.”

The man grinned. “I could use a hand to work the crop,” he said.

John nodded. Labor was notoriously hard to find in Virginia. He would have to be a hired hand until Hester sent him a note of credit and he could become a gentleman again.

“Very well,” he said. “But I have to go to Jamestown first. I have a promise to keep.”

John saw the governor for a brief snatched moment as the great man strode from the new assembly room to the governor’s mansion. John hobbled after him in his ill-fitting shoes. “Sir William?”

The young man turned, took in John’s humble clothes and strolled on. “Yes?” he threw over his shoulder.

“I am John Tradescant, gardener to the king.” John followed him. “I was planting my headright up the river when the Powhatan saved me from starving. I lived with them for years. I have come to Jamestown to ask for clemency for Opechancanough.”

Sir William blinked at the extraordinary story and hesitated. “Clemency?”

“He’s an old man, and he could see no way forward for his people. If they had been allowed to settle fairly after the first uprising he would not have felt so driven. They’re ready to make peace now, a lasting peace, if we could only give them the land they need.”

“You are a spokesman for them?” Sir William asked. “You’re on their side?”

Almost imperceptibly a couple of soldiers from the assembly doors edged a little closer.

“No,” John said. “They have expelled me. I am an Englishman and as soon as I can I shall return to London. But I owe them a debt of gratitude. They took me in and they fed me when I was near to death of starvation. I should like to repay my debt to them and indeed, Sir William, I think they have not been treated fairly by us.”

The young man hesitated for only a moment, then he shook his head. “This is a new country,” he said. “We are exploring all the time, south and north and west. The Powhatan, and the other savages, have to know that this is our country now, and if they fight against us, if they break the peace, then death is the only response.”

“The peace was here before we arrived,” John said quickly. “The country was here before we came. The Powhatan were here before we came. Some might say that it was their country.”

Sir William looked sharply at John. “Then that man would be a traitor to England and the king of England,” he said. “You say you were servant to the king himself. He’s not a man who accepts half-loyalty, and neither do I.”

John thought for a moment of his long-distant court life and the king who could not distinguish between half-loyalty and playacting and reality. “I am faithful to the king,” he said. “But it is a bad example to kill the king of the Powhatan. He should be like all kings – inviolate.”

“This is not a king,” Sir William said with sudden impatience. “This is a savage. You insult His Majesty by the comparison. The person of a king is sacred, he stands only below God himself. This dirty old Indian is a savage and we shall hang him.”

He turned abruptly from John and walked away.

“He was a king to us only a few years ago,” John said staunchly. “Pocahontas was a princess. She was invited to London and treated as a princess of royal blood. I know. I was there and I saw it. The Powhatan then were a free and equal people and their royal family was as sacred as ours.”

The governor shook his head. “Not anymore,” he said simply. “They’re less than animals to us now. And if you choose to go back to them, then tell them this: that there is no place for them in this country. Tell them they will have to go” – he gestured – “south or farther west and keep on traveling. It’s our land now and we won’t share it.”