Poison in the Colony Read online

“I hope she found Captain Smith.”

  “Ah, the stories we’ll hear about their year in England!”

  My stomach twists into a knot. I know that when the Treasurer lands, it will bring bad news instead of joy.

  My mother is staring at me. “Are you not happy to see Rebecca again?” she asks. There is a challenge in her voice, and I know that she is somehow suspicious. But how could she be? I’ve never said one word about the knowing to anyone but Samuel.

  I quickly put on a smile, though it feels as if it reaches only my mouth and not my eyes. “Yes, I am very happy,” I say. “We’ll hear stories about England.” My words catch in my throat and I have to look away. Before the ship’s arrival I could still imagine her alive and well. But soon, everyone will know what I have known for a year.

  My mother will not let it rest. She takes hold of my face and turns me toward her. There is fear in her eyes. She shakes her head slightly and whispers, “Oh child, no.”

  My mother and I stand next to each other, among settlers giddy with excitement, grimly awaiting the bad news that we both now expect.

  * * *

  . . .

  It is worse than even I knew.

  Samuel comes to our cottage for supper, and after our meal, he and my father sit talking in hushed voices.

  “Mattachanna and Tomocomo say she was perfectly well when she left to have dinner with Captain Argall and her husband. They say she must have been poisoned. She died within hours of coming back from dinner,” says Samuel.

  My father shakes his head sadly. “And Captain Argall insists it was illness.”

  “One thing is for certain,” Samuel says, “Captain Argall will never be punished if he did murder her with poison at that dinner. His only accusers are not English citizens.”

  “We may never know the truth,” my father says.

  Samuel glances over at me, as though the knowing would give me details anytime I ask it. I scowl at him. All I know is that Rebecca is gone, and now there are two motherless boys: her son with Kocoum, living in one of the Indian villages, and little Thomas, left back in England to be raised by John Rolfe’s brother.

  Samuel lowers his voice and thinks I can’t hear. He says to my father, “How long do you think the peace will last with her gone?”

  My mother has been agitated and sullen all afternoon. Did she care so much for Rebecca that she is now grieving? She gathers our soiled clothes into a bundle.

  “Virginia, come help me with this washing,” she says. Then she plops Alice onto my father’s lap and leads me out the door.

  What a strange time to do laundry, I think, in the evening, when the drying sun is almost down. And my mother loves to gossip with the other women while we wash. At this hour, there won’t be anyone else there.

  I follow her obediently. When we reach the river, all is quiet except for the spring peepers chirping. I decide to wash Alice’s clothes first, as they are the dirtiest. I tie up my skirt and wade into the water. The chill makes me shiver.

  Suddenly my mother’s hands are upon me, yanking me down, pushing me underwater. I struggle, kick, try to pull her hands away. She pushes harder, her weight holding me under. Air! Air! Breath! I dig my fingernails into her hands and claw the skin away. She screams and lets go.

  I am up, heaving in a breath, water dripping into my eyes. I see my mother’s face: terror. She reaches for me again, pushes me hard. I fall, and she is upon me, holding me under.

  A clear, cold thought enters my mind: She is killing me. Darkness crowds my vision. I go limp. She pulls me up out of the river and shakes me hard. I cough and sputter.

  My mother is sobbing now. I am too exhausted and confused to run from her. Her hands are bleeding where I clawed them. She reaches out to hold my face in her palms. I flinch, but when she touches me, I feel her love—it has not changed. I feel her love for me, and her fear of something terrible. It is fear that has made her do this to me. She wants me to be just as afraid as she is.

  “You must kill it in yourself, Virginia,” she says. “Do you understand me? You must kill it, or they will kill you. They will torture you to get a confession—hang you by your thumbs until the pain is so great, you will tell them whatever they want to hear. Then they will strangle you—cut off your air just like when you were under the river, but they will not let go the way I did. When you are dead, they will burn your body and spit on your ashes.”

  She takes a shivery breath and seems to be staring right through me. In a small voice, she says, “That is what they did to your grandmother.”

  I shake my head hard. I don’t want to hear these terrible things.

  My mother continues, “You saw what they did to me and Jane Wright. What was our sin? To know about healing and herbs? That I tried to help that dying gentlewoman? Because Jane delivered a baby who did not survive? That gentleman found out what they did to my mother in England. He decided I must be suspect as well. All it takes is one gentleman or nobleman, or even a yeoman, to cast suspicion, Virginia. And out comes the whip . . . or the strangling cord and the pyre.”

  “Your mother knew healing and herbs—” I begin. I am afraid to ask what else was the cause of her tortured death. The death of a convicted witch.

  Mum nods. “Yes, she was a healer.” She looks into my eyes. “And she had the gift of the second sight.”

  My whole body begins to shake. My mother wraps her arm around me and guides me out of the river. She sits with me on a fallen log and rocks me in her embrace.

  “I call it the knowing,” I say in a small voice. “That’s what Samuel named it.”

  I feel her body stiffen. “Samuel knows?” she asks.

  “Yes,” I say. “But no one else. He told me never to tell anyone.”

  She relaxes. “We must not even tell your father. He is already worried that the second sight will be passed from my mother through me and on to our daughters. That is one of the reasons he is always hoping for a son.” She kisses the top of my head. “Kill it in yourself, Virginia. Promise me you will do that?”

  “I promise,” I say. I don’t know how I’ll do it, but for her safety and mine, I know I must.

  2

  POISON

  Seven

  APRIL 1619

  “BERMUDA EASON, THAT is no way to bait a fishhook!” I snatch the hook and the wiggler from him and stab the wiggler firmly onto the hook.

  Bermuda grimaces. His sandy-blond curls stick out from under his cap.

  “You’re worse than my little sister,” I say, and hand the hook back to him. He casts it into the river.

  “Mum says I better catch something today,” Bermuda mumbles. “Our corn is almost gone.”

  “Ours too,” I say. The natives call March the hungry month, but for us sometimes April is even hungrier as we wait for the first spring ships to arrive with new stores.

  We are at our favorite fishing spot at Glass House Point, where the land juts out into the river and the water ripples by, making a swishing sound. There is a lightness to the day. We are officially done with two years of Captain Argall as our governor. He will go back to England on the first supply ship to stand trial for the many accusations by colonists against him. Our new governor once again is Sir George Yeardley, who has always been a fair man.

  A great blue heron lands on a rock nearby, then, standing on one leg, looks at us.

  “We’re not sharing with you,” Bermuda tells the bird.

  And with that, the heron flies off.

  “Want to skip rocks?” Bermuda asks.

  “Sure,” I say. We can hold our fishing sticks with one hand and throw with the other.

  It makes sense that Bermuda and I would be friends. We were both born in the New World when it was first being settled by the English. Bermuda was born on the island he was named after, when his ship was marooned there in 1609. He is a little younge
r than I, though sometimes he seems a lot younger. Maybe it’s true what my mother says whenever I’m too bossy: that I am approaching my teen years faster than other girls my age.

  Also, Bermuda and I are both children of commoners but our parents are well respected because they have been here for so long. They are among the group called “the ancients,” even though my mother is only twenty-five and my father is in his thirties.

  Bermuda sends a flat rock skimming across the water, ending in a staccato of tiny skips. “Ha! Fourteen!” Bermuda grins, proud of himself.

  “How could you even count those, they were so fast,” I say. But it is clear he has won the contest. I have only been able to get six skips, no matter how perfect a skipping rock I find. It’s about the only thing Bermuda does better than I do, which is why he always wants to play.

  Suddenly there are rocks plopping into the water—rocks neither Bermuda nor I have thrown. I turn toward the trees to see where they are coming from and one hits me squarely in the forehead.

  “Ah!” I cry. There is blood on my hand when I touch my face.

  “Charles, get yourself gone!” Bermuda shouts. He aims a large rock and throws it hard.

  I see the back of Charles’s waistcoat as he scrambles off between the trees.

  “That stupid boy,” Bermuda says. He peers at my face. “It’s not bleeding very much.”

  “I’ll be fine,” I say. It feels good to have Bermuda sticking up for me.

  “I wish he would figure out it was sickness that killed his mother, not anything your mum did,” Bermuda says.

  “I wish he’d move to one of the plantations,” I say.

  Bermuda hands me my fishing stick, which I dropped when I got hit.

  “I’ll race you home after we catch our fish,” I say.

  He rolls his eyes. Nobody beats me in footraces, not even the older children who arrive from Europe.

  But we don’t race home. We walk back, as the sun dips behind the trees, knowing our mothers will want us for chores, and knowing they will both be disappointed that we didn’t catch anything.

  As we pass the old glass house, Bermuda insists on looking inside. Sometimes this is where the German and Polish craftsmen come to sit and drink their ale. But there is no one here today. All is quiet, with only the ghosts of the men who worked here when the colony first began and glassmaking was one of the industries.

  “Can’t you just see it?” Bermuda asks, his voice full of wonder. “A fire in the furnace so hot it melts sand, me running back and forth. ‘More wood, Bermuda! More wood, I say,’ my boss is yelling at me. ‘Blow the bellows, Bermuda. Keep that fire hot!’” He pretends to pump a large bellows. “Then, when I’m older, they’ll teach me to make the glass. I’ll have my long rod, and the melted glass, and I’ll blow and blow.” He blows on his imaginary rod. “Look! I’ve made a wine flask.”

  “Very nice,” I say, playing along, seeing his clear green flask in my mind’s eye.

  Bermuda is quiet, looking around at the dusty glass house, the tattered roof, the cold furnaces, the shards of broken glass on the floor. “They’ll start it up again someday,” he says. “I know they will.”

  “It’s been almost ten years since they’ve tried to make glass,” I say. “It didn’t work. Why would they try again?”

  He huffs at me. “It did work. My da still has a drinking glass that was made here.”

  “You know what I mean. It didn’t make enough money when they sold the glass in England. That’s all the Company cares about—profits.” Our colony is owned by the Virginia Company of London. Their main mission is to make a profit from James Town for their shareholders and investors, either from something we can find, like the gold they were first hoping for, or from something we can produce here to be sold in England.

  Bermuda frowns, and I suddenly feel bad for dashing his dreams. “Maybe someday you can sail to England and become an apprentice to a glassblower there,” I suggest.

  “No,” he says. “I want to do it here.”

  He marches ahead of me up the hill. I am tempted to continue arguing with him, but for his sake, I decide to keep my mouth shut. When we are almost to the fort, Cecily comes running to meet us.

  “Ginny, I’ve been looking all over for you,” she says. She is out of breath. Her blonde hair has strayed in wisps from her bonnet and her cheeks are bright red. She is one of several girls of marriageable age who always want to know where Samuel is, what he has said about them, what color eyes he likes in a girl, and all kinds of other silly questions that I could do without.

  “What do you need, Cecily?” I ask, bracing myself for yet another silly question.

  “It’s Samuel—his leg. He’s asking for you. He says he’s dying.” She blurts it out.

  I toss my fishing stick to Bermuda. “Where is he?” I demand.

  “At your cottage.”

  I take off running.

  Eight

  I HEAR CRIES of pain as soon as I enter the fort. It is Samuel’s voice.

  I run to our cottage and burst inside. Samuel is on the bed, writhing and shouting. Gathered around him are several of his friends, Reverend Buck, and my mother, who is bathing his leg with a bloody rag.

  I drop to my knees beside him. “Samuel, what is it? What happened to you?”

  He grasps my hand and squeezes so hard it hurts. “Stingray,” he growls through clenched teeth.

  “We were fishing. He was wading in shallow water,” one of his friends says.

  “We pulled the barb out, but the poison was already in him,” says another of his friends.

  The young men hang their heads and shuffle their feet, looking helpless and guilty, as if they should have been able to do something.

  “Ginny.” Samuel grimaces as he talks. “I need you to tell me. Am I going to die?” He lets out another agonized groan.

  Reverend Buck looks at me sharply. I see my mother stiffen. How could Samuel be asking me this, when he knows how dangerous it is for me and my family? He must be half crazed, or completely crazed, by the pain. The knowing is trying to nudge me, trying to rise up and answer Samuel’s question, even though I have done my best to kill it for two years now—drown it deep in the waters of my mind. I shove it back down, take a deep breath, and answer, “Yes.”

  Samuel lets out a long cry. “I knew it! Dig my grave. I am ready to lie in it.”

  Reverend Buck is scowling at me. “How do you know this, Virginia?” he demands.

  My mother lets the rag slip into the bowl of bloody water. I’m afraid she might faint.

  I stand and straighten my back. “Because we will all die, Reverend. It is the way of things.”

  My mother breathes out a quick sigh. The reverend’s face softens. Samuel groans. “No, Ginny, I mean today.” He grunts and tries to raise himself up on one elbow. “Am I going to die today?”

  I put out my hands, palms up. “How in the world am I supposed to know?”

  Samuel flops back down. I run to get my mother’s long wooden spoon, the one with the teeth marks on the handle from when she was in labor with Alice. I go to Samuel and place the spoon handle across his mouth. “Here,” I say. “Bite on this. It will help with the pain.”

  Samuel bites down. There, I think, that will shut him up.

  I sit on the bed with Samuel. “You told me the story a hundred times,” I say. “About Captain Smith and the stingray.”

  Samuel nods. Beads of sweat stand out on his forehead.

  “When Captain Smith got the barb shot into his leg from his stingray, he thought he would die, right?” I ask.

  Samuel lets out a howl and thrashes so hard, he almost kicks my mother.

  “Make the water even hotter,” my mother says. I go to the fire and bring back the steaming kettle. We know, from others who have been stung, that very hot water is the only thing that help
s with the pain.

  “Not everyone dies from these stings,” Reverend Buck offers.

  “Captain Smith ate his stingray after he recovered,” says my mother. “We’ve got yours right here, Samuel. We’ll cook it up for you. You just get through this, and you can eat it later.”

  Samuel nods quickly, the spoon bobbling up and down.

  I grasp his hand again and squeeze almost as hard as he squeezes me. “Be as strong as Captain Smith,” I say.

  Nine

  NOW I HAVE two constant companions. Alice has been my little shadow almost since she could walk. Getting my chores done while she “helps” makes everything twice as hard. But now I also have Samuel.

  Samuel is recovering well from the stingray attack. He relished eating the odd-looking creature and shared the meat with us as well. But his leg was so torn up from where they pulled out the barb, it is still too painful for him to work in the fields or tend the cattle.

  Others who have been stung died later of infection or gangrene, so Samuel is sticking close to me and my mother, having us check the wound and treat it with herbs. He hobbles over each morning and plops himself down, ready to talk.

  On the third day of this, I decide our cottage is too small, too hot, and too smoky for all of us, so I bring my work, and my entourage, outside. My mother leaves to fetch water and to see if there is a ration of eggs for us. I build a fire in our outdoor pit and put our porridge on to cook. I set Alice on the ground with a few kernels of corn and a small mortar and pestle that we normally use for herbs. Then I go to work with the big stone mortar and pestle to grind our corn. Samuel sits on a chair with his leg propped up on a log. He swats at the buzzing flies.

  I notice that the bandage, which is supposed to cover the back of his calf, is mostly falling off. I figure it is good for the wound to get some air, so I leave it hanging open.

  “Tell me about the prophecy,” I say. This is a conversation he always enjoys, talking about the prophecy given to Chief Powhatan by his high priests shortly before the first English ships came to James Town. It has been one year since Chief Powhatan died. Some say he died of grief after he learned that his favorite daughter, Pocahontas, had died in England. His brothers, Opitchapam and Opechancanough, have taken over his position as paramount chiefs over all the tribes.