Cate of the Lost Colony - Lisa Klein [113]
“I love you, too, Ladi-cate,” he said.
I touched my fingers to his lips as I had longed to do since the night we danced together. They were smooth and warm and still parted in a smile. Gently Manteo kissed my fingers, then nudged them aside and with his hands tangled in my hair, brought me close and pressed his lips to mine. Mine at last. All my insides stirred and shivered, and I felt I would faint with happiness. Manteo tasted like salt, like tears, like the sea, like the very air that sustained my life.
In him I was lost; in him I found myself.
Epilogue
From the Papers of Sir Walter Ralegh
The Conclusion of the Narrative of a Voyage to Virginia
Returning to the Croatoan village, I informed John White I had found the Lady Catherine in a primitive state, not amenable to reason. We departed from the island that evening.
How appalling it was to see my countrymen living like savages! How humiliating to be refused and rebuked by one who has so forgotten her own nature that she fancies herself in love with Manteo. For his part, White bore his griefs like one of the ancients, satisfied merely to know the fate of his colonists, shameful though it was.
When we returned to the ship, I told the captain we had found no Englishmen on the island and no sign of their recent habitation. I decided we would give the same report to the queen, reasoning that because the colonists would not return to England, they should be considered as lost.
“They do not wish to be found. That is not the same as being lost,” White said. He maintained Her Majesty would want to know the fate of her colonists; that was the reason she permitted the voyage.
“How, then, will I explain why they were not brought to justice for abandoning Fort Ralegh?” I asked. “She will hold me accountable and send me back to hang them all. No, I will give no one cause to seek them. I am done with this Virginia enterprise.”
Finally White agreed that to save ourselves and his colonists further trouble, we would say we found no English settlers on the island. Moreover, due to the loss of the anchor, we could not risk a further search of the mainland or sail for Chesapeake.
Alas, Lady Catherine is right: I love success and hate my failures. It is bad enough there is no city of Ralegh to boast of. I will not have Her Majesty discover that her subjects have chosen to live like heathens under a foreign queen. No one must ever know that she whom I sought as my reward has rejected me for a tawny-skinned Indian. This would make me the laughingstock of all England.
If I had gone to Virginia at the very outset and ruled the colonists myself, would my city now be flourishing? Or would my decisions have brought more suffering and a worse fate for everyone?
If I had said “I love you” to Lady Catherine even once, would she have consented to be mine?
Vain are all regrets, for they change not the truth: I have lost what I most desired to possess.
Hopewell. The very name of this ship mocks me.
On the 24th of August we made our rendezvous with the Moonlight and El Buen Jesus by the inlet south of Croatoan Island. Thereafter the weather turned foul, forcing us to alter course for the Azores. On the 19th of September we came upon several of the queen’s ships and private men-of-war. Capt. Cooke lingered, hoping to waylay the Spanish fleet. I had no heart for prize taking, so I was not dismayed when we missed the fleet. Cooke resumed course for England, and without further misadventure we came safely to Plymouth harbor on the 24th of October.
I have had enough of the sea, and I forswear love. For now. My papers from this voyage, the evidence of my failure, must be destroyed. Shall I throw them into the sea or burn them and commit the ashes of my ambition to the cold ground?
Alas, I am brought low, but not quite to despair. For there are willing maids galore, and new rumors