Cate of the Lost Colony - Lisa Klein [93]
“When you return with the news that the colony thrives and the Indians have been civilized and converted to the true religion, even Walsingham will hail you as a hero.”
What a tantalizing thought! “And the Lady Catherine?” I ventured to ask. “After I give her the handkerchief, what shall I do?”
I saw my mistress hesitate. Her long hands fluttered. Then they rested and she fixed me with her clear, bright stare.
“Bring her home, and she can be yours.”
Chapter 36
Orphaned
In Nantioc I had dreamed of returning to the familiar comforts of Fort Ralegh. I planned to make peace with Eleanor and never again let a foolish disagreement threaten our relationship. Had we not become almost like sisters? I imagined the rejoicing that would greet our safe return, the stories we would have to tell. All those dreams evaporated like dew from the grass when we walked into the half-abandoned village where despair and the smell of death hung in the air.
Ananias was overcome by the loss of Eleanor. He hid his face and wept, his whole body shaking. Alice Chapman’s keening rent the air when she learned her husband had been killed. To my own grief was added guilt, for I had failed to keep my promise to John White to watch over his daughter.
Though Ananias urged him to stay, Manteo left Fort Ralegh to rebuild alliances among the native peoples. This, he said, would benefit us. But I think it pained him to see how desperate we had become, how fallen from our first hopes. I watched him go, regretting that I had not properly thanked him for rescuing us. I was afraid he would rebuke me, for in my heart I felt our late misfortunes had all sprung from my foolish insistence on going to Dasemunkepeuc.
In his absence, I found I missed Manteo. I felt as if new dangers were imminent and I was unprotected. Betty and I were the objects of much curiosity, but I did not want to discuss my sojourn in Nantioc. I could not boast about how well we had been treated while our fellow colonists had been sick and dying, abandoned by those who fled to Chesapeake. Nor could I make them understand why Jane had decided to stay with Tameoc. Even Alice Chapman was horrified by that.
With the departure of Roger Bailey and his party to Chesapeake, we were like a body cut in half. There were only eighteen men left in the village, plus three boys barely able to grow a beard. To them fell the task of defending us all. Day and night Georgie Howe patrolled the towers like a lumbering ghost.
“They will come back someday and take Georgie with them. Did they go where my papa went? All of them into the cold ground? George is cold out here,” he said over and over.
Thus as our second year on Roanoke Island began, misery settled in like a grim lodger. Not since my father’s death had I felt so hopeless. The weeks spent in the Tower, the long sea crossing, even the captivity in Nantioc were like child’s games compared to the hardships we would face if another winter passed without ships bringing relief. It was men that we needed most—to work and to protect the fort, then women for their companionship, and finally animals to raise for meat.
October threw its brazen cloak over the landscape; the leaves drifted from the branches like a million lost hopes scattered on the ground. Corn and pumpkins and sunflower seeds had to be picked, openauk dug from the ground. The abundance mocked us, so few in number. We stored the harvest in a cellar dug beneath the armory, precious as the few firearms that remained, since Bailey took most of them to Chesapeake. He had promised to return for the rest of the colonists, but as the months passed that promise began to look like a lie. One day I admitted to Betty I hoped they had all perished.
“Perhaps they have, and it was God’s will. But take heart, for we have been preserved,” she said.
“Our preservation was Manteo’s doing, not God’s. I think God and England both have abandoned us,” I said.
But Betty