Chapter One
It seemed to Thomas that despite his numerous attempts to be one of Ratcliffe's men, he would forever remain the young, slack-jawed ginger who, in his continuous bewilderment of all that around him, had successfully walked off a ship and been saved by John Smith. Unfortunately, none of them seemed to recall the foaming, stormy waters or the sails whipping violently above their heads in a turbulent rage. The image of John, dragging a coughing, spluttering man—no, a boy, barely eighteen—on deck was forever implanted in their minds. Though Thomas was a friendly enough young lad, he struggled to lift a sack of sawdust, while the others, black hair covering every inch of their tanned and brawny forearms, stacked three on their shoulders. If they were pack horses, he was a drowned mouse. Or perhaps if they were all farm animals, he was at least a chicken.
It was these gloomy thoughts that were occupying Thomas's mind as he sat around the campfire with the other men that night. For the most part, they were kind to him—when they weren't making offhand comments about his paleness or his freckles or his slender fingers, that is. Woman hands, Ben called them.
"Oi, Thomas," Percy drawled, clapping a burly arm around the smaller man's shoulders. "Ye don't have to shoot the boar, just eat it." He poked at Thomas's uneaten dinner, charred, rivulets of juicy fat coursing through it. Lon really was a terrible cook. He'd only been designated as so because he was the shoddiest hunter of all the men, Thomas excluded.
"You got a problem with my cooking, Tom?" Lon asked, wiping his greasy fingers on a soiled apron which Thomas supposed was once white.
Ben chortled, black teeth and all, and said, "It's not your cooking that's the problem, ye brute! The boy just needs a fine woman in that apron serving it to him."
The men all laughed. Thomas managed a grin and rueful shrug, biting into the pork. It was mostly gristle, and an unpleasant thickness coated his tongue as he smiled. He imagined it leaking through his teeth and dribbling down his hairless chin.
Later that night, as Thomas lay in his dismal cot, he thought of his mother. She was beautiful—is beautiful, he scolded himself—with fair, luminous skin and hair like cast bronze. His father was an imposing sort of man if you avoided looking at his face, which had an ever-present genial aura about it. He had darker auburn hair, a shade that Thomas envied. Alden, only nine and now without an older brother to look after him, was the epitome of an English cherub, with full cheeks and glistening golden hair.
Gold. Gold was the reason that they were forever digging holes, akin to stabbing a pincushion a million times with a single needle.
Sleep soon overtook him then, and Thomas dreamt of warm brown eyes that matched his own.
An ear-splitting shriek rattled the tent.
Thomas leapt out of his slumber instantly, heart battering his chest, and reflexively seized the musket which lay underneath his cot, fumbling and dropping it. He cursed and grappled with the weapon as if attempting to clasp a wriggling carp.
I'm the carp here, he thought.
Trembling, visions of savages and gore overwhelming him, Thomas secured his grip on his weapon. He rose a quivering, pale hand and brushed the tent flap open—
Howls of glee greeted him.
A burning sensation accosted his face, and he tossed the musket back into the tent. Savages? He had been foolish.
"Very funny," smirked Thomas. "Which one of you ladies decided to squawk into my tent this fine morning? I must admit, it did give me a little start."
Percy chuckled, wiping away the tears which trailed down his flat, pug-like face. "Don't play hard, boy. Ye bounced outta bed like an Injun in a bathtub. What were ye gonna do with that gun anyway? Try to shoot it, and ye'd end up missin' yer bollocks!"
The other men chortled. Thomas sported a rueful grin, his neck glowing, and ducked back into the tent.
After a meager breakfast consisting of dusty cracker-bread and leathery beef, Thomas emerged once again. It was another day that greeted him, no different from the last: in a cycle of dull monotony, he would dig with all of the other men, who on the whole treated the endless, banal task with the dreary attitude it demanded. Underneath this front of tedium, however, seemed in each of the men a slight glimmer of hope—anticipation at the prospect of gold. Regardless of how fruitless the day would eventually close, the possibility never seemed entirely futile. Was it delusion? To even entertain the thought was, in Thomas's opinion, unseemly; it had to be true, and any other circumstance was blasphemous to their presence here, in a land so far removed from home.
Glory would prevail, thought Thomas, as the sun beat down on his back, its fingers worming their way into his clothing and imposing on his white skin patches of lurid red. His shirt was soon drenched, and perspiration plastered it to his frame unpleasantly. Sometimes, when he rose his head to wipe the sweat off his brow, he swore that he could see the heat's rays bending, as if the sky was curving towards the earth in an unwelcome greeting.
Thomas paused briefly for lunch, consumed a small portion of leathery cracker-bread and dusty beef, and resumed digging.
It was mundane work, and during it his thoughts often drifted. Today, for whatever reason, he found himself recalling Evelyn, the daughter of the local baker back home. A sweet-faced young lass, she had the tendency to blush prettily, especially when Thomas greeted her on the occasions he'd visit the bakery. Their fathers were close, and it was often that they spoke, although in Thomas's mind their interactions could hardly be called conversation. He'd bring up school, the weather, even, at one point, the process of rising yeast. All of his attempts were met with measuredly pleasant answers and furtive upward glances at him.
Women were often strange around Thomas as a general rule, and he couldn't for the life of him see why. He wasn't obtuse. He knew how women admired men, and how men admired women. He had seen, throughout the years, how girls coyly watched his schoolmates, the men on the dock, even on occasion—rather disturbingly—his own father.
But he wasn't well-muscled; he wasn't manly. He was rather tall, he supposed, and his mother had often commented on the thickness of his reddish hair—hair that had been a source of humor for fellow schoolchildren when he had been younger. He definitely wasn't repulsive, he acceded, but he wasn't like Aldrich, with his mossy green eyes, curly midnight hair, and strong brows. Aldrich had said that Thomas had a way of speaking with women. Thomas could never really see it. He spoke to them like he spoke to anyone else, he thought: friendly, with a careless smile, and he'd told his friend so. Aldrich had grinned, a single dimple in his right cheek, and said, "Maybe they think you're pretty."
At the time, Thomas had scowled and shoved him, his face hot. Now, he thought of the hardness of the dark-haired boy's shoulder under his fingertips.
Thomas gripped the shovel, knuckles white, and thought of nothing but rosy cheeks and the scent of freshly-baked bread until dinner.
The campsite was considerably tenser than usual the next day when Governor Ratcliffe decided he'd had enough of John's absence over the past few weeks.
"Where does that infernal man go off to, day and night? Never seen a shovel in his life, that one!" thundered Ratcliffe to no one in particular, his heavy brows crushing beady, black eyes underneath. "Ha! Captain John Smith, my bollocks."
Thomas exchanged a look with Lon, who rolled his eyes to the cloudless sky and fired off five rounds in rapid succession. He only missed the target once.
"He has a point," said the dark-haired man to Thomas's right. Darcy was his name, remembered Thomas. "We're here doing all this digging while the captain is off getting his jollies swimming and plucking daisies." He was loading his musket with a practiced ease, his dexterous hands moving quickly. Thomas watched enviously.
"Shut it, ye knob," grumbled Lon, an empty carton in his teeth, eyes drilling holes in the target at front.
"Perhaps he's off scouting or something, finding new campsites and the like," said Thomas.
Darcy scoffed, carelessly fired off several rounds, and admired their perfect landing. "You're just soft on him because you'd be drowned otherwise," he said. Then he chuckled darkly and muttered something to himself that Thomas's didn't catch, although it sounded nasty, and departed either in search of ammunition or better company.
"YOU, BOY!" Ratcliffe shouted.
Thomas leapt up, startled. It was the first time that the governor had addressed him directly in the weeks since the camp had arrived.
"What're you glaring at? Either practice shooting up those damned reds or go dig some holes. I don't need any more wastes of space in this confounded camp!"
"Yes, sir!" replied Thomas at once. He loaded his musket clumsily, dropping a bullet in his haste. Hoping that he had escaped Ratcliffe's attention, he glanced up warily. The man glared back at him.
"Don't just stand there dawdling, boy! Get to it—quickly now!"
"Er, yes, sir," said Thomas, wincing, and fired off a shot. Although he had braced himself for the recoil he knew would come, his hands still jumped of their own accord at it. The bullet was launched into a nearby tree.
He stumbled backward and eyed Ratcliffe warily. The incensed man strode towards him alarmingly quickly for his bulk, the plume of his hat bobbing frenetically. Thomas lurched to his feet, stumbling again in his haste. Ratcliffe panted, his plump face mirroring his magenta coat, as he seized Thomas by the collar of his sweat-drenched shirt.
"BLASTED CRETIN!" he roared. "HAD SMITH LET YOU DROWN IN THAT OCEAN, YOU WOULD HAVE SAVED US ALL THE TROUBLE!"
Breathing deeply, he released Thomas and glowered down at him. "Make yourself useful, Timothy boy, and either grab a shovel or go find out what your beloved captain is up to. AND PRACTICE YOUR SHOOTING, FOR THE LOVE OF ENGLAND!"
With that, Ratcliffe stormed away, red cape rippling behind him. Thomas stared after him incredulously, fear rapidly giving way to vexation.
"Ye alright, mate?" asked Lon.
"Yes," Thomas said testily, and he went off in search of his compass and, apparently, his beloved Captain John Smith.
For what seemed like an hour but in reality was closer to twenty minutes, Thomas clambered through trees and bushes, fighting them all along the way. Twigs relentlessly snagged his trousers, and he crouched to disentangle them, muttering irritably to himself. Angry thistles soon joined in pointy harmony, with a couple successfully lodging their horridly spiny bodies into his skin.
"Bloody hell," Thomas cursed under his breath as he examined his wounds.
"What was that?" a familiar voice emerged suddenly from his right.
Startled, Thomas glanced up sharply and spotted the very man he had been searching for in the nearest clearing, a mere nine or ten meters away. Or perhaps it was another man that resembled John Smith identically, because John was doing something so peculiar that it couldn't have been him. He appeared to be caressing a strange woman—an Indian woman.
Cautiously, Thomas slowly flattened himself to the forest floor, biting his tongue as thistles pierced his palms, until he felt he was entirely hidden by a cover of foliage and brambles.
John had his hands on the Indian woman's face, looking away as if searching for the source of the disturbance. Thankfully, he was focused in the direction opposite the intruder. John turned back to the woman and spoke gently, his words too soft for Thomas's ears, and brought her face to his in a tender kiss.
Thomas's mind whirled. Captain John with an Indian? The sight was so extraordinary, the idea so outlandish, that he doubted reality for a moment. But he couldn't have dreamt with such clarity of a native woman he'd never seen, or of the present pain stinging his limbs.
Both parts aghast and intrigued, he stared at the woman engulfed in John's embrace. She was tall and lithe, nearly statuesque, with black hair that cascaded freely down her back, and was so immodestly clothed, her sharply cut dress exposing brown thighs, that Thomas would have flushed red in any other situation. But now he gaped, wonderingly, at the bizarre dark marking on her arm and at her chestnut skin as it stood out starkly—no, radiantly—against John's pale limbs. She drew back then, and Thomas caught sight of her face: it was regal, with high cheekbones, full lips, and proud eyes. She was beautiful.
She was savage.