Cate of the Lost Colony - Lisa Klein [73]
Bailey made no attempt to stop the visits to Dasemunkepeuc. He told Graham he hoped we would be killed for our troubles and thus end his. For my part, I was glad to escape the company of the anxious and divided colonists for that of the Indian women. Mika had recovered her health and was always glad to see me. She patiently corrected my errors in speaking, then had me repeat what she said. By this method my knowledge of Algonkian grew, and soon all the women could understand me.
Graham was always pleased to come along as my protector, though we encountered no dangers. Then I realized he had been watching Mika. As yet she wore a mantle against the cold, but in the summer months when all the women bared their breasts, would he stare all the more? Mika was of an open and generous nature. One day she gave me a small cup lined with mother-of-pearl. She gave Graham one also. He had learned a few words of Algonkian and he thanked her, which made her turn away shyly.
“You have not forgotten Lady Anne, have you?” I admonished him.
“No more than you can forget Sir Walter,” he countered.
“But he and I were never to one another what you and Anne were—are to each other,” I said. “Your affection was apparent and ours never spoken.” I thought of Ralegh’s letter I had read aboard the Lion almost a year ago. It had been full of regret and sorrow and even hope, but not love.
“I do not think of Sir Walter often,” I admitted with some truth. It seemed vain to dwell on the past or wish for an uncertain future. When I thought of the touches, the words and the poems we had exchanged, it was all about the anticipation of love, the secrecy of it. Never the fulfillment, which might have ruined the pleasure itself.
“Now he and I belong to different worlds, as unalike as the sun and the moon,” I said.
“But if he were to come to this world—,” Graham prompted.
“We would all be glad, for we would no longer be in want. But where are the ships he promised?”
Graham shook his head. “Perhaps Ralegh has suffered financial ruin or lost the queen’s favor. John White may have been shipwrecked. The plague may have struck and carried off half the people of London. Or the Spanish have invaded England. The queen might be dead and King Philip on the throne, for all we know.”
“Are you trying to frighten me, Thomas Graham?”
“No, my dear. But I do think I am unlikely to see an English ship or my Lady Anne again.” He looked so forlorn I thought he might weep.
“Then we must make the best of our circumstances here and learn to live alongside the Indians,” I said.
And so I continued my efforts to learn the ways of the Croatoan women. I followed them to the swamps where they gathered reeds and watched as they wove them into mats. They showed me which roots were edible and which ones would sicken me. I learned to identify huckleberries, cranberries, and mulberries, which I took back to the island and made into preserves. I picked wild peas and helped to harvest rice from a shallow lake; I ground nuts and acorns and even made bread out of them. All this knowledge I shared with the other colonists in the hopes that our second winter would not be as desperate as the first.
Mika and I became close friends. She loved to dress my hair, tying it behind my head after the Indian fashion. One day she turned up my sleeve and, using a dark blue dye, embellished the skin of my arm in a lacy pattern. I felt like one of the queen’s ladies preparing for a masque. She offered to dress me in a deerskin like her own, but I did not want to bare so much of my flesh. I wished that Emme and Anne could see me and hear me speak the Indians’ tongue as easily as they themselves spoke French.
While Graham and I were at Dasemunkepeuc the hunters returned, arriving as quietly as the fog that