Cate of the Lost Colony - Lisa Klein [32]
One part of your kingdom, submits to you;
So I, one maid, from mine own hand
Submit this praise that is your due:
All desire but few deserve
A place in your affection.
All I seek is but to serve
You, joying in my election.
My life I trust you to preserve
By granting your protection.
And when from pleasing you I swerve,
I beg for your correction.
A poem is a powerful thing, I find. What my tears and pleas did not accomplish, my verses did. She calls me her Cat again! I purr! I am content, save for one thing I lack: your love.
Alas I, too, find it is easier to write my feelings than to speak them.
Your affectionate
Cat. Archer
What does she mean by that last sentence? Does she accuse me? Why should one speak words, when actions will do more? Is writing not an action?
My Catherine pretends humility, yet is proud of her verses. They are indeed passable. Amazing, that a maid should show a poet’s wit! I like her even better.
Memorandum
30 July 1586. Sir Francis Drake has docked in Plymouth with half his fleet, some cargo pillaged from Spanish colonies in Florida, and all my colonists.
Damn Ralph Lane. I never gave permission for him to leave the island, or his pack of sorry dogs, slinking home with their tails between their legs. What fears did Drake, that dandified pirate, arouse to make him abandon all our efforts there? Lane protested he had been abandoned without supplies. But on the first of May I dispatched Grenville with a relief ship. Damn him, too, for sailing around robbing Spanish frigates for his own profit! The delay has cost me my colony.
The queen is angry with Grenville and with Lane, whom she has dismissed from her service. The fool Tarleton, drawn like a vulture to carnage, mocked their failure in Virginia—and my own. “They are no men, if a hundred of them cannot subdue a single virgin, but run away when she throws a tempest.”
10 August 1586
Dear brother Carew,
By now you have no doubt heard of my setback. Reassure our investors they have not been defrauded. Do not heed the malicious reports of those disgruntled men who magnify the dangers of Virginia. No worthwhile enterprise is without risk, and those who take chances most deserve to be rewarded.
Thomas Harriot still has a favorable view of our prospects for success, citing the many resources, including the healthful uppowoc (which the Spanish call tobacco). He has no doubt that in time even greater riches will be discovered—if not by us, then by Spain.
He is writing a treatise and John White works on his drawings. Those that survived the storm strike the mind with their strangeness, yet convey our common humanity. My favorite is the depiction of a dancing conjuror, who but for his nakedness resembles Dick Tarleton. When published, Harriot’s report and White’s drawings will induce more men to try their fortunes in that land of wonders.
For true it is that the appetite for newness is never sated. Fashions change with the wind, and anything exotic is desired by all the moment it appears. Thus I may yet hope that my Virginia, a blushing maid dressed all in feathers and furs, will attract many suitors.
Your brother, Walter
…
Memorandum
Concerning Manteo. I did not expect to find such worthiness in one of the savages of Virginia, but Manteo daily surprises me with his excellent judgment and quick mind. His command of our tongue is better than a Frenchman’s, and happily he lacks their affectation of speaking through the nose.
Concerning the Indians and the best means of governing them, he concedes they are divided by long-standing grudges and their alliances shift constantly.
“Do they understand their prosperity depends on their submission to the English queen and her deputies?” I asked.
Manteo hesitated. “We understand laws that are just. We understand the English are very powerful.”
I said I was angry at Lane for the killing of Wingina and asked if he thought it had been justified.
Manteo thought before replying, for it was his nature to be circumspect.
“It is better to be feared than loved,