Virgin Earth Read online

  The cold winter mornings at sea were hard for John. While he had been in Lambeth, trapped between the demands of the king and the duties to his family, he had managed to forget the last words she had called to him – ‘Come at Nepinough’, the harvest time. He had not gone back to her as he had promised. Perhaps she had waited, perhaps her mother had waited with her, and met every boat from England for all of the summer season, and then? And then? Would they have waited a full year, would they have waited two, four?

  John hoped that they would have heard that England was at war with itself. The Virginia colonists were sworn to the royalist cause but there would have been a ready stream of gossip and fears running around the colony. Enough talk, surely, for the Indian woman and her daughter to realise that perhaps John could not get away? But perhaps they had never thought that he would come. John remembered Suckahanna’s ability to say nothing for a whole month, even though he spoke to her, and laughed with her and worked beside her and watched her every move with tenderness and desire. She had said nothing to him, even though she had understood every word that he had said. She had said nothing to him because she had been ordered by her mother to stay silent. Perhaps, after Nepinough had come and gone, her mother had ordered her to forget him, or to marry a man of her own people, or – worst thought of all – to go and lie with a white man and earn their safety that way. At that thought, John would pull on his boots and stamp up to the deck and look out over the bowsprit to where the horizon of sea and air lay empty and unhelpful, miles and miles away.

  ‘I’ve never seen a man in such a hurry to go and see some flowers,’ Bertram Hobert remarked as he came beside John one morning near dawn to lean on the rail and look westward with him.

  For a moment John thought of confiding in him – his anxious desire for Suckahanna, his undeniable betrayal of Hester – but then he shrugged and nodded.

  ‘Running from? or running to?’ Hobert pursued.

  John shook his head at the tangle of his life. ‘Both, I suppose.’

  They ran into a storm just a week before they were due to sight the coast of the Americas and John had some bad days of sickness and fear as the ship rolled and shuddered and felt as if she was foundering in the troughs of the waves. He opened the hatch and looked out to try and ease his sickness but he was met by the sight of a wall of water, a towering mountain of water, rearing over the narrow deck and about to fall. The other passengers, a young family and a couple of men, shouted at him to shut the hatch, and he dropped it down and then heard the crash of the wave on the deck, felt the ship shudder under the impact and stagger under the weight of the water. They were in such terror that they did not speak, except Mrs Austin who prayed constantly, her arms around her children, her eyes tight shut, and Bertram Hobert, who maintained his own whispered litany of swearing. John, huddled in the hold beside them, wedged in with goods, was certain that they were all going to sink to the bottom of the heaving ocean, and that he would deserve such a fate, because he had betrayed not one but two women, and had abandoned them both.

  Slowly, painfully slowly, the waves eased a little, and then the terrifying howling of the wind in the mast and the rigging eased, the ship steadied, and once again they could hear the everyday noises of the crew on deck. The hatch opened and dripping and exhausted sailors dropped down into the hold and shouted into the galley for bread and a hot drink before turning into their hammocks to sleep, all wet and sea-stained, with their boots still on. The bread was rationed, the water rationed too. The ship had made the voyage without the usual stop at the West Indies and everything was running short.

  John, cautiously going up on deck, found a clear, freezing day with the storm a dark smudge on the horizon to the north, and before them, and ahead of them, and growing clearer all the time, the stark white and black of the forests of Virginia in midwinter.

  ‘Home,’ John said, as if the storm had blown his doubts away, and the terror of the storm had earned him the right to claim his own land and his own future. ‘Home, at last.’

  As they sailed up the river John looked around eagerly for changes. He could see at once that settlers had spread out along the river in the four years he had been away. Every three or four miles there was newly cleared land and a little house set facing the water, a small wooden pontoon to serve as a quay for loading of the only crop: tobacco. John thought that Suckahanna’s mother had been right to predict that there would be no room for the two races to live alongside each other. The British were spreading themselves so prodigally that their new lands and houses lined the riverside like a ragged ribbon on both banks.

  Bertram Hobert joined John at the rail. ‘That’s Isle of Wight County.’ He nodded towards it.

  ‘Isle of Wight?’ John exclaimed, taking in the thick forest, deep green with pine and fir tree, black and white with naked boughs filled with deep snow. Hobert laughed shortly. ‘Sounds odd, doesn’t it? Isle of Wight County there, and Surrey County next door to it.’

  John looked to the other bank. ‘And there’s Jamestown at last,’ Hobert said, following his gaze. ‘I’ll tell my wife to be ready.’ He turned and went below. But John stayed on deck, straining to see the settlement, to see all the changes. The derelict land around Jamestown had spread further in the four years, like a wound gone bad, festering in the marshy ground. The tree stumps were left in the ground to rot and the unused branches were left where they had fallen. New patches of ground had been cleared by burning and were black and charred, ready to come under the plough for tobacco to be planted in spring. Drifts of snow were heaped around the cleared area as if the loss of the trees had left an opening for fierce winds and cold weather. Even the snow was dirty.

  Jamestown itself looked as if it were thriving. The stone quay had been extended to handle more and more ships coming to the country for tobacco, and the warehouses along the quayside were a storey higher and broader than they had been before, laden with drifts of grimy snow which rested on the cold roofs.

  There was a new paved road running parallel with the river, and someone had planted a row of trees for shade. Behind the new road were substantial stone-built houses, still no greater than a yeoman’s cottage in England, but better made than their predecessors, and with windows of oiled paper rather than shutters. In some small square panes John could see the bright glint of expensive glass.

  The quayside was still filthy with garbage and the deep gutter in the new road showed that no-one had thought it worth while to consider drainage for the new town. The score of houses still tipped their nightsoil on the riverbank or threw it out in the yard where it froze and then leached into the drinking water supply. It was still a town where men, and an increasing number of women, were coming only to seek their fortunes. They did not care what sort of life they led nor what sort of place they were making. Most of them still thought of England as ‘home’.

  The fort was still there but the gates were stuck open and the guns were rolled back, as if they were only kept in place because no-one could be bothered to move them.

  On the quayside people were waiting for news, goods, and to greet the new settlers. They were broad as bears, every one of them, muffled up against the cold air in thick skins, each breath a cloud before every face.

  ‘What news of the king?’ a man shouted as he caught the rope and made it fast. ‘What news of the war?’

  ‘Victory for the king!’ one of the sailors shouted jubilantly back. ‘We left just as his cousin Prince Rupert had wiped out Parliament’s men. One of the survivors swore there was no doubt about it, the king will have beaten them by now.’

  ‘Thank God for that,’ the man replied. And another one cheered. John noted that the report by one trooper of one skirmish had now been elevated into a total defeat and the end of the war, but said nothing. That was how the king’s masquing worked. Only one battle was ever enacted. There was no long, bitter exchange of small victories and small defeats, little setbacks and petty humiliations. One glorious cavalry charge by Pr
ince Rupert had concluded the matter and the colonists could go back to growing tobacco and making money with light hearts.

  John shrugged and went below to fetch his bags. He was as far from England and the news as everyone else. He had no reason to think that the war would be a longer and more painful business than the sailor and the colonists believed. Perhaps they were right and he was wrong and already the king was back in Whitehall and planning some new triumph: war with the Irish, or war with the Scots, or – since it was King Charles, as changeable as March weather – war with the Spanish or French. John hefted his bag holding his clothes and his money over his shoulder and went up on deck to the head of the gangplank.

  She was not there. Not among the crowd on the quayside, nor back in the shadow of the warehouse walls where he had left her. He shook his head, he had not really expected her to be there, on the quayside; but he could not help the pang of childish disappointment. Somewhere, in a corner of his mind, he had seen himself coming down the gangplank and Suckahanna, a little older, a little more beautiful, running towards him and into his arms. It had been a foolish dream by a man who had already buried one wife and deserted another, a man who knew that love and desire do not always have a happy ending. But John still looked for her, and still knew disappointment that she was not there.

  He watched his box being unloaded and then took hold of it and dragged it through the slush up to the inn where he was absolutely certain that he would find the landlady as sour-tempered and as inhospitable as four years before.

  His first visit was to Mr Joseph.

  ‘Of course I remember you,’ the magistrate said. ‘You went out into the woods in an Indian canoe and came back with barrelfuls of plants. Were they any good in England?’

  ‘Most of them took,’ John said. ‘Some of them did very well. One of them, the spiderwort, is one of the most beautiful flowers I have ever grown. We had the purple one before, but this is white like a little three-petalled star.’

  ‘And what news of the king?’ Mr Joseph interrupted.

  ‘Good news. Prince Rupert’s cavalry had a great victory at a place called Powick Bridge,’ John said, repeating the popular belief. ‘They say he can’t be stopped now.’

  Mr Joseph nodded. ‘Well, thank God for that,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what would have been our case if Parliament had won. We’re a royal colony. Do we become a Parliament colony? No-one thinks of these things. What about you? Would you have been a gardener to Parliament?’

  ‘I’m here because I don’t know what I would have been,’ John admitted. ‘I couldn’t see my way clear at all.’

  The magistrate nodded. ‘Now what can I do for you? D’you want another Indian guide?’

  ‘I want the same one,’ John said, keeping his tone deliberately casual. He wondered if the man could hear the pounding as his heart raced. ‘I want that girl again. Do you know where she is?’

  ‘What girl?’

  John had to force himself to speak quietly and steadily. ‘You sent me out with a girl, d’you remember? Her baptised name is Mary. Her mother was in prison for a month for accusing someone of rape. You had the girl in service here, d’you remember? When I came back her mother met us and took the girl away. She said they might go back to their own people. Have you seen her since then?’

  ‘Oh, the harlot and her daughter,’ Mr Joseph said, remembering. ‘No. They must have gone into the woods. I’ve not seen them.’

  John had expected anything but this blank refusal. ‘But … but you must have?’

  Mr Joseph shook his head. ‘No. D’you want another guide?’

  ‘I want that girl!’

  The man shrugged. ‘I can’t help you, I’m afraid.’

  John thought rapidly. ‘How could I find her? D’you know of other Indians who come in from the forest who might know her?’

  Mr Joseph shook his head again. ‘They’re settling down at last,’ he said with satisfaction. ‘The ones who have been taken into service are kept here, in town, or safe on the plantations. The ones who have kept to the forest are pushed back, almost every day, further and further away from the river, away from the coast. We’re cleaning the land of them. We’re getting them out of the way. If she’s out in the forest with them you’ll not see her again. She could be over the mountains or the other side of York River by now if she’s got any sense.’ He paused for a moment. ‘What d’you want her for?’

  ‘I promised I would take her into my service,’ John said smoothly. ‘I said when I came back and built my house she could come to work for me. She’s skilled with plants.’

  ‘They’re all skilled with plants,’ Mr Joseph said. ‘Get another one.’

  Every new immigrant to Virginia was awarded a headright of land, fifty acres a person. John, arriving for the second time, was awarded a further fifty acres, marked solemnly on a map held in the new building of the burgesses’ assembly. His father had been persuaded to purchase two headrights when the Virginia Company was founded, so John had his land put together in one spreading acreage of two hundred acres: as big as an English farm. It was upriver from Jamestown, not the most desirable of sites since the tobacco ships would not go too far upstream. The earliest assignments had all been around Jamestown or downriver. Latecoming planters had to ship their goods in their own boats downriver to Jamestown and catch the ocean-going boats there.

  John looked carefully at the burgesses’ map. The lines of rivers and mountains were indistinct and vague. The only part of the country that John knew well was the woods where he had lived for the month with Suckahanna, and they were indicated with a rough scribble suggesting inlets and islands and swampy ground. It hardly mattered. There was so much land to be had in the new colony that disputes over boundaries had been left behind in overcrowded England. No-one in this new huge country was going to quibble over a mile to the east or ten miles to the west, scale was a different thing in this vast emptiness.

  Bertram Hobert was consulting the map alongside John. ‘Next to my land,’ he remarked. ‘What d’you say we build one house together and then live in it while we work on the other?’

  John nodded thoughtfully. ‘When could we start?’

  ‘Not till spring. We’d die of hunger and cold out there in the winter. We’ll stay snug in town until spring, and go out as soon as we can.’

  John looked out of the open slit of the window at the iron-grey sky and the falling snow and thought of Suckahanna, barefoot in the frozen woods where the snow was dozens of feet deep and where the wolves howled at night. ‘How could anyone survive out there in winter?’

  Hobert shook his head. ‘Nobody can,’ he said.

  Winter 1642–3, Virginia

  Bertram Hobert rented lodgings in town for himself, his wife Sarah and his slave, a black man called Francis. After John complained of the treatment he got at the inn, Hobert said he could stay with them until the spring, and then the whole party would go upriver to look at their new land.

  John found the town much changed. A new governor, Sir William Berkeley, had arrived from England and had equipped the official residence with beautiful furniture and goods. His wife, who was already a byword in the community for her looks, was giving parties and all those who could remotely pass as a gentleman and his lady were dressing in their best and walking up the drive to the governor’s house. The roads were paved now, and the tobacco was no longer grown at the street corners and on any corner of spare land. A man could buy or sell using coin and not pinches of tobacco or bills drawn on a tobacco merchant’s. ‘It’s become a town and not a camp,’ John remarked.

  Those were the beneficial changes of the four years. There were others that filled him with worry for Suckahanna and her mother. The river was now lined with plantations from its mouth right up to James’s Island. Before each of the planters’ houses the land had been cleared and the fields stretched down to the little wooden piers and quays. On James’s Island itself the fields ran into each other, there was no forest left at all. O
n the more distant banks the land was black where it had been burned and not yet ploughed. John could not see how Suckahanna and her people could survive in a country which was turning itself into fields and houses. The woods she had roamed every day for mile after mile, hunting turkey or wood pigeon, or looking for roots or nuts, were burned back to a few scorched trees among ploughed fields. Even the river, where she had followed the schools of fish ready to catch them wherever the flow of the water was right, was enclosed by riverfront acres and penetrated by landing piers.

  John thought he might be imagining it – or perhaps it was the effect of the freezing-cold weather – but it seemed to him that the flocks of birds were fewer, and he no longer heard the wolves howling outside the walls of Jamestown. The countryside was being tamed, and the wild animals and the people who lived alongside them were being driven inland and away. John thought that if Suckahanna was with her people they might have been driven far away to where the burgesses’ map showed nothing more than a space marked ‘forest’. He started to fear that he would never find her again.