Cate of the Lost Colony - Lisa Klein [51]
Let us honor fair Astro-phil
(Fall’n on the battle’s bloody plain)
By meeting his enemy, Spain, full well
In Virginia, across that watery main.
The queen bade me sit at her right hand, while Walsingham gave me the blackest of looks. He is still angry I received the Babington estates. Alas, I would almost give them up to obtain what I have not: my freedom, my own will, and true love.
1 July 1587. Outside the privy chamber, Walsingham stopped me with these words: “Do not forget I am the architect of Her Majesty’s policy with regard to Spain. Your efforts must not interfere with mine.”
Is he so full of envy he does not welcome my enterprise of challenging Spain in the New World?
Fie upon his threats! The old spymaster does not command me.
I wonder how he can hear anything with that cap pulled over his ears?
24 July 1587
Dear brother Carew,
Her Majesty’s summer progress will take her through Devonshire. I may not leave her side, so you must contrive to visit me. You will recognize me by my puffed-sleeve tunic the color of a Valencia orange, and a plumed hat too ostentatious even for my taste. Do not laugh at me or I shall thrash you as if we were boys again.
I swear no man is more hated for being loved than I am. The queen has granted me the monopoly on broadcloth, and every man who suffers the loss of his trade because of it hates me. I wish she would love me more by hating me more. It is a paradox, I know; oftentimes things most contrary are both true.
By now the Lion and the pinnace have landed at Chesapeake. There must be no time lost in sending a supply ship, but I am all of out funds. Go to our investors and praise Gov. White’s abilities. Remind them of the innumerable pearls and the veins of copper awaiting our discovery, by which we shall all be made richer than King Croesus.
Your brother,
Sir W.R.
Chapter 20
A Dead Man
The tides ebbed and flowed around the Lion, anchored near the inlet at Hatorask. But after so many weeks of confinement we still could not leave the ship. John White, Ananias Dare, Manteo, and forty soldiers had set out in the pinnace to retrieve the soldiers Grenville had left at the fort. When they returned we would sail the short distance to Chesapeake and settle there.
While we waited, I borrowed an eyeglass to peer at the sand-covered hills, where grass and gorselike bushes grew. They were not as green and lush as I had expected. A seaman, gesturing with pitch-stained hands, explained this was a barrier island holding back the sea from the mainland that lay across the shallow bay beyond it. With the glass I searched the sea, hoping to see a great fish with fins like sails or the rare leviathan, creatures I had seen only in pictures. I was impatient to be on land, but it was a pleasure just to stand on deck and feel and taste the salty wind. I found myself wishing Sir Walter were beside me. Did he envy me, that I would see Virginia before him and help to build the colony he longed to govern?
I wondered what it was like for Manteo to return to his own land. Would he tell his people about great city of London and teach them English? Would they still accept him now that he looked like an Englishman? I smiled to think of the horrified looks that would greet us if we all returned to London dressed like savages.
When the pinnace returned, it carried the same forty men who had gone out the day before.
“Where are Grenville’s men?” called Roger Bailey from the deck of the Lion.
“They were not at the fort,” shouted Ananias in reply. “But we will search until we find them.”
“No, son, we sail for Chesapeake now. We will return later,” said John White.
One of the women started weeping, for her husband had been among those left on the island.
Then Fernandes announced from the quarterdeck that none of the men would be allowed to board the ship again. But he demanded to see White and sent out a rowboat to fetch him.
At this the men in the pinnace grew restive. Ananias