Thomas is not as green as he is cabbage-looking, but I've got him fairly well stymied here.

Disclaimer: Disney characters mostly but with my own spin ...

CHAPTER 20

As soon as he was in sight of the camp, Thomas shouted. 'Help! Help!' he yelled, and quickened his run, his feet thudding on the tree-roots. The sentries standing on the walkway inside the fence jumped to the alert.

'Thomas!'

'What's the matter, boy?'

Thomas stumbled through the gate, shouting and gasping for breath. Two or three men came from beside the watchfire to catch him by the shoulders. 'Steady, lad! What's going on?' 'It's Captain Smith!' Thomas was crying. 'They got him!'

'Who?'

'The Indians! Captured him! Dragged him off …'

Lights were showing inside several tents, and men coming out.

'The Indians! Filthy brutes!'

'Where?'

'Where'd they take him?'

'How many of them?'

'What were you doing there?'

Already a crowd was gathering, and the questions clapped round Thomas's head until it spun; but he was not as distraught as he looked. The first part of his plan had worked: he had deliberately entered the camp making as much hue and cry as possible, so that all the men would know that John Smith had been captured, and might force Ratcliffe's hand. If he told Ratcliffe first, the news might go no further. The governor might be well pleased for the Indians to do his work for him.

'We've got to save him!' cried Thomas. 'He'd do the same for any of us.'

'Thomas is right; we've got to do something!' declared Ben.

'And so we shall!' Ratcliffe's voice rang crisp and commanding as he strode up to the men. 'We have tolerated too much already,' he went on, drawing the circle in around himself. 'Captain Smith tried every means to deal with the savages gently, no blame to him, but look how they've repaid him! We shall teach them a lesson.'

Mutterings of agreement and outrage rose from the group. Thomas extricated himself and stood directly in front of Ratcliffe, expecting that the next thing the governor would do would be to ask him to report. He had ruled out telling the truth: to say that it had all happened because of a girl might be to sign Smith's death warrant, and he could not bear to confess that he himself had killed a man. He was running over his story feverishly in his mind, yet Ratcliffe ignored him.

'At daybreak, we attack!' he cried.

The men cheered. Some came with armfuls of fuel for the watchfire and piled it until fountains of sparks flew thirty feet into the air and the whole camp, already bright with moonlight, was lit up like day. Ratcliffe urgently turned to one man, then another. He called the bugler and got him to blow a blast that would summon anyone who might still be sleeping. While people gathered, he had the master gunner fetched and was soon deep in a discussion about the possibilities of bringing cannon to the attack. Sir Richard Clovelly was brought to join the group and made to describe the approaches to the Indian village in detail with his huntsman's eye. By the time everyone was present, there were the makings of a plan, and Ratcliffe gave orders for the men to prepare their weapons and supplies and divide into groups, whose leaders he chose. There was a rush for the stack of muskets, and the whetstone was hauled into the firelight.

Thomas stood by himself, caught up in the battle-fever yet bewildered. After the paralysis and indecision of the last days, everyone was, of a sudden, inspired, united, each working like ten men, giving of their best to the common endeavour: and all because of that one word, 'attack'. All this force had been held back by John Smith alone. Had he been right?

It was war. It meant killing. It meant murder. Though the killing Thomas himself had done haunted him, it would soon be swallowed up in the general rush: they would all be at it. But had anyone thought what good it would do? Would it even save John Smith? Perhaps he was dead already, or dying some terrible slow death … and the governor, Thomas was sure, did not care. He wanted both to get rid of John Smith, and to massacre the Indians, and the news Thomas had brought served his turn very well: Thomas himself no longer mattered in the least.

As he stood indecisive and wretched, he suddenly felt a touch on his elbow. Sir Richard Clovelly and Mate Dawkins flanked him. They led him a little away from the fire, behind the armoury hut.

'Now tell us, Thomas Rowe,' said the mate, 'as the governor doesn't seem interested, what happened? Because this attack is all very well, but when Captain Smith went, he left very clear orders about not attacking the Indians, even if he didn't come back, so Sir Richard says.'

'We can still stop this,' said Sir Richard. 'When you say they captured him: what happened exactly? Are you sure they meant him harm?'

Thomas stared, wondering what to say. Meant him harm … if they had seen what he had …

'If they just marched him off a bit roughly,' the mate pursued, 'that might not mean anything. He'd have them eating out of his hand in half an hour. The captain's a cool customer, he can blag his way out of pretty well anything, I've seen him do it.'

'And the last thing we want to do is queer the pitch for him,' said Sir Richard.

How much to tell? Thomas still could not bring himself to speak of the man he had killed.

'No, I'm sure,' he said unhappily. 'They burst out on him … I saw … he'd been kissing this girl.'

Both Dawkins and Sir Richard gaped in utter consternation. 'A girl?' said the mate. 'Oh, God.'

Sir Richard released Thomas's shoulder and turned back to face the fire. 'Well, that's it,' he said tightly. 'I don't suppose we'll see him alive again. A girl … would you have believed it …?'

'No, I wouldn't,' said Dawkins, 'and I'm not sure I do now. But I'll tell you one thing, whatever sort of a fool John's been, I'll have a few of them for this.' He walked off purposefully towards the whetstone and the pile of swords that lay beside it.

'Get yourself ready, Thomas,' said Sir Richard. 'Cheer up. We'll have a good slap at them, whatever happens.'

Thomas was left alone. Even they had joined the battle-frenzy: laconic Sir Richard, level-headed Mate Dawkins, not even they could think of anything that might really help. He went to his tent and got his kit-box, and sat cleaning his musket in the light of the fire, the glare and smoke hurting his eyes, the constant hubbub ringing in his ears, and in his mind the endless question: what could he do? What could he do? He was elbow to elbow with other men, but spoke to none of them – many did not even know that he had brought the news – until someone jogged his elbow. It was Ben Macquarie.

'Hey,' said Ben. 'I thought you might like to know – some of the lads and me just went to the governor and asked him if we couldn't have a go at springing the captain while it's still dark, just a few of us. I thought it'd be better.'

Thomas's heart leaped. 'What did he say?'

'Nothing doing,' said Ben regretfully. 'He says we mustn't. I told him straight, I'm an old sheep-stealer and surely stealing a man isn't too much different from stealing sheep. Anyway it's about what I'm best at. But he said no. I'll tell you this, Thomas, he spoke the fairest I've ever heard him speak; he's not such a bad man in a pinch. He said the savages probably mean to use Captain Smith as a hostage and that if more of us got captured it would only make things worse. There are too few of us, he said, to risk losing anyone; our best chance is to keep together. He said Captain Smith wouldn't want us going into danger on his account. He explained it all, and he thanked me. But unless you want to go behind his back, I reckon ...'

Thomas listened in an agony of indecision. His first impulse was to say, 'We should do it anyway. The governor wants Captain Smith dead.' But then he had to admit that Ratcliffe's arguments, on the face of it, made sense. He wondered if John Smith had been mistaken from the beginning: had his reluctance to attack the Indians been only because of that girl, that girl for whom he had been ready to forget them all? And at the same time he heard John Smith himself saying: 'Keep your head down, Thomas, obey orders …'

'No, I reckon not,' he said to Ben.

It was too much for him. All he could do now was play his part, one soldier among many, on their way to destroy the pieces of a puzzle they could not solve. He sighed, and stood up to go to collect his powder and shot.

*****

For some minutes after Pocahontas left, John Smith had no conscious thoughts but was possessed by the sight and touch of her, and ached with longing for her. While she was there, he could draw strength from the well of her love; he could take comfort from the continuance of her life. But gradually her presence faded, and his mind turned to other concerns. There was a long night ahead.

He knew he should try to settle his thoughts and get ready for whatever the morning might bring, but his mind sped feverishly along a dozen tracks of thought and feeling, unable to bring any of them to a conclusion. He could not stop his spirits from rising at the hope of escape, only to fall yet lower every time he showed himself how ill-founded that hope was.

Within a few minutes he had satisfied himself that he could not do it alone. The strips of hide round his wrists were thick, strong and slippery, and were tied so tightly that his fingers were already numb. There was no sharp object to hand. The post was smooth, and so firmly set that he could not rock it, even by straining his shoulders against it as hard as he could. They didn't do things by halves, these Indians. Even more discouraging, he found, the guards came in at least three or four times in an hour to make sure that he was still well secured.

But he might have help. Sending Thomas away had been the prudent thing to do, he reasoned, as well as the right one. The boy would have got back to camp and raised the alarm; maybe a rescue party was already on its way… But even if one was, what chance had they? How would they overcome these watchful guards? There were some good soldiers in that crew, but none of them had the quality of recklessness without which no such attempt could succeed. No one but himself. How nicely I could have planned my rescue, he thought wryly. But those fellows? No. If they try anything it'll be an all-out attack, and what are the chances I'll be alive at the end of it?

And of course there's Ratcliffe. He'll be delighted to get rid of me, but he won't want to put it that way to the others. Isn't it plain what he'll do? He'll encourage them to attack, but make sure the Indians have time to kill me first. Then the men'll massacre the Indians to his heart's content. The man's a genius, in his way. But he's a fool, too. He thinks the Indians are a rabble that won't stand and fight … Just as John thought this he saw the wall in front of him grow lighter as a fire somewhere outside flared up. Loud voices rang out and an unmistakably warlike drumming began. The battle was already preparing. These men would fight in a killing trance to the bitter end, but they had no idea of the terrible force of cannon and massed muskets, they did not know how many would die; both sides wanted this war, but only he knew … and no one would listen to him.

He remembered the time he had bluffed his way out of a Hungarian camp where his case had been no more promising than it was now: how he had enjoyed making a fool of the guards. With these Indians, he simply could not bring himself to try it. He already felt too much ashamed: they had just cause against him. He did not deserve to escape, yet his death would solve nothing. Had he imagined, after Thomas killed that young man, that letting himself be caught and killed was the best he could do towards peace? That it would somehow settle scores and that the rest of them could start over again? Yes, in some part of him he must have thought that, to have acted as he had. The truth was just the opposite. He had only made things worse.

The two guards from the door came in. One crouched behind John and carefully checked that the straps were still tight, while the other stood looking down at him.

John gazed into his face. 'I have to talk to your chief,' he said in a mixture of English and the native language, as calmly and persuasively as he could.

The young man started backwards with the look of someone who has trodden on a snake. John almost pitied him.

'We have to stop this battle,' John said. 'I mean you no harm. Please, fetch the chief.'

The man behind him got up and said something in a harsh voice. As John started to speak again, he leaned over and hit him squarely across the face.

By God, they were as panicky as cows. (Yes, and who had made them so?) John blinked and waited a few moments for the pain to subside, then tried again. 'I am not your enemy. Please let me speak to the chief.'

The man did not hit him again, as he half expected him to; instead, the two conferred in mutters and then left the hut. John turned as best he could to watch the entrance, twisting his lip to try to stop blood running into his mouth. For a few minutes he was hopeful, but nothing further happened. The next time people came to look him over, it was two different guards. He spoke to them as he had spoken to the first two, but they did not respond in any way. Clearly, new orders had been given: the foreigner will try to talk you round, do not answer him. He spoke to them the next few times they came in, and now and then shouted to them outside the hut, but with no response. At the end of an hour, the drumming outside had become so loud he doubted if his shouts could be heard. His helplessness suffocated him, and he yanked with all his strength against the thongs round his wrists, shouting inarticulately. It did no good.

What do you expect, John Smith? he then told himself. Why should they listen to you? You were going to have a fine time, weren't you: to rob them, cheat them, and maybe if you were a decent man leave them the crumbs, although you knew full well that most of the company wouldn't even want to do that. Yes, Ratcliffe had the idea. More honest, as well as sparing ill-will and suffering, if we defeat them as quickly and completely as possible… make no distinction of age or sex … So now they're going to fight us, and the strongest will win. As always. So much for my finicking, thinking I could make it better. I couldn't even decide what I wanted and stick to it. I could neither do the task I was set to, nor turn traitor with a will: I fell between two stools, and no wonder I am sitting here waiting to die. At sunrise. Six, seven hours…

Suddenly a wave of terror attacked him. It appeared that until this moment he had not sensed his death as a reality, although he thought he had. So many times he had risked his life, knowing that death would come at some moment, part of life as he had lived it: dozens of times, but this was different.

The wave passed and he tried to repeat to himself the sensations it had contained, to confront them rationally and of his own volition. He found it impossible. His mind evaded them, shrank away and escaped down other trains of thought, grateful for the respite. At different times he found himself thinking about vague promises he had made and never kept, to see friends or make inquiries, up to ten years before; or going over the scenes he had had with Ratcliffe since the voyage began and wondering what more he could have done to avoid being so thoroughly outmanoeuvred. But his thoughts circled more and more weakly and ineffectually, crippled by his awareness of what he was not facing and what had to come – until the dull misery was such that he thought frank terror would be preferable – but that only until the next wave of it came.

There was no escape: the futility and helplessness of his end worked through and poisoned every moment he had left. He felt that his whole accustomed self was as fragile as a child's castle in the sand. As time went on each successive wave of terror blurred it, and each ensuing period of vacancy silted it, until he felt that by morning there would be nothing left. He feared this almost as much as he feared death itself. Why? he asked himself. Why care? You failed and you are going to die anyway. If you lose your pride, your knowledge of what you are, or once were, of what consequence is that to anyone except yourself? And that is a self which is not going to exist any longer: therefore, of no consequence at all. And yet, he kept trying to raise the battlements of the sandcastle again. To hope to prepare for death was far too ambitious. He was merely trying to keep some semblance of himself alive until the time of death arrived.

At intervals, between and even during other conscious thoughts, he mechanically repeated to himself certain religious phrases. They brought him a vague comfort, but he lacked the nerve, or the practice, or perhaps the humility, really to beg for God's help, considering how he had always neglected Him. Now was not the time to start. He would have to die as he had lived: alone.

Every muscle in him felt unbearably restless. At least at home condemned men get the chance to walk up and down, he thought. I am sick to death of propping up this post. For the twentieth time, he turned his attention away from the stabbing cramps in his arms and the heavy ache across his shoulders. Don't let it get to you, Smith, he told himself. It's war; these things happen; don't take it personally. But there was no comfort to turn his mind to instead. He badly wanted to lean forward and bury his head in his hands. Instead he tilted it back, stifling a cry of desperation.

It was past midnight, the moonlight had moved far round, and outside, the drumming and chanting had increased in volume to a mesmeric wall of noise, joined by cries sliding wildly in pitch like the feet of a man about to hurtle down a cliff. They made the hair rise on his neck. He told himself that the men were preparing for battle and that this performance had little to do with him. Yet the utterly alien sound made him feel more naked and alone than he had ever thought possible. And the flinty eyes that stared in at him from time to time, from painted faces, while he tried to keep some kind of countenance, were further than ever from seeing him as a fellow man. He was prey. The voices and the eyes were those of starved hunting creatures in the dark. In a few hours they would break their fast: on him.

If I even knew how they are going to do it, he wished, sighing deeply as he tried to get enough air to last through the waves of terror. An ugly picture from the past, which he had tried to forget, came back to him vividly: a sailor who had fallen overboard, whom they had been unable to save, breaking the surface of the waves with screaming sea-birds flocking round his head, their beaks tearing at his eyes. Yet those were animals. Their cruelty could not exceed their need for life ... He was in the hands of humans.

Then just as it seemed his spirit would sink altogether under the weight of horror, it inexplicably began to right itself, as a boat can sometimes come head to wind without any steering. Louder than the drumming, the sound of the waterfall came into his memory, the glitter of the water on the stones, and the eyes of Pocahontas, as fierce with love for all things as those cries outside were with hunger. He remembered the insects that flew into the spray, and the age-old columns of the trees, and how she had held out her arms like spokes of the wheel that joined them. If she was right, those spirits must all have a thousand memories of suffering and dying, and still they danced in the ring of love … What was life but a waterfall where everyone must be dashed to pieces on the rocks? But on the way was the rainbow, the dizzying speed, the eternal stillness. He and Pocahontas had taken the leap together, hand in hand. What more could anyone ask?

As he thought this, even the post behind him that gave him no ease seemed to touch him with the living strength of the willow tree, and it came to him that his own God had died, too, on the tree of life. No rescue had come, no assurance, no comfort, so he could expect none. But he was not alone.

For a few moments he held the balance. Then terror came back and he lost it. But something remained. It was as if he knew the way slightly better: a small part of him was reconciled to what had to come, and yet understood that his human spirit would still have to flail and struggle against its end. So time passed for him until shortly before dawn, when pain began to blur everything else, and at last all he could think about was the effort to stay silent. Even so, however weary he grew of the night, he was unable to wish it any shorter. He wanted life.

*****

In the darkness Pocahontas clambered onto the stump of the willow. The gnarled, dry branches, the whispering strands of leaves, poured comfort into her. She knew at once that the tree was listening and watchful. It seemed to enfold her in its hard, millennial strength. She knelt down and shed tears for the first time that night.

'There, child,' whispered Grandmother Willow, 'I saw it all. What came after?'

She spoke up, her voice cold and hollow with despair as she named the worst. 'They're going to kill him at sunrise.'

At once, with certainty, Grandmother Willow said what Pocahontas had feared, and known, she would say.

'You must stop them.'

'I can't,' wailed Pocahontas. It was too much to ask. How could her frail self stop that dreadful landslide that had begun when Kocoum surprised them, and had been gathering force ever since, with rolling boulders that would crush anyone in their way? Especially herself, already crippled with the guilt of having started it? Why me? her soul cried out helplessly.

'Child, remember your dream,' urged the voice.

'I was wrong, Grandmother Willow. I followed the wrong path,' cried Pocahontas. She was accusing herself in appearance, but really accusing her guide, who had pointed her clearly down that path. She knew it and did not care. It was Grandmother Willow who had led her into this pit. Now let her help her out, or at least know what she had done. But moments passed in silence and she could feel that the spirit was angry. She could not afford to lose the only comfort she had. She offered by way of apology, in a piteous whisper, 'I feel so lost.'

Still the willow tree said nothing. Pocahontas could see the branches quite clearly, and hear the wind soughing in them, without being aware that it was the light and the wind of dawn. She was intent on waiting for some sign. Nothing happened. Ordinary life went on around her. One or two birds rustled and cheeped. Her raccoon, whom she had not seen for two or three days, had been sitting on the river bank nearby. Now he got up, climbed to his hole in the hollow part of the trunk and began scratching around, scraping out the rubbish and the results of his thieving that had collected there. I wish I were a dumb beast, thought Pocahontas. Not to have to do, or know what I have done.

She sat hunched with her arms clasped round her knees. Small pieces of debris struck against the tree-bark and leaves near her and bounced off. Then something larger fell with a curious hard ring against the tree trunk. She had heard that sound only once before in her life. Quicker than thought, she put out her hand and caught the object that might otherwise have fallen in the river.

'The compass!' she said in surprise.

Had the raccoon carried it all the way down here from past the waterfall? The sight of the compass hurt, because it belonged to him. Nevertheless she looked at it more closely and wonder grew in her. She could not tell what it was made of: something smooth and shining, with a pattern inside that you could not touch because it was covered with something hard but clear. The pattern was of sharp points facing outwards in a circle, like the rays of the sun, in different colours, red and black and gold. It was a beautiful cunning thing, full of good magic. Had Kekata seen this, when he pronounced that the white men were ravenous wolves, with an emptiness within which their greed could never fill? She noticed after a moment that one of the points was not fixed, but trembled and moved. It was like a tiny black arrow. As she turned the compass in her hands it moved in the opposite direction so that it was always pointing the same way. As she turned faster, it spun to catch up.

'Spinning arrow,' she murmured.

She felt Grandmother Willow looking.

'It's the arrow from your dream.'

It was. She realised in a flash that this was what the dream-arrow had really looked like; when she had thought about the dream and told others of it, her mind had unthinkingly transformed the compass-arrow into something like a war arrow, because that was the closest thing to it she had ever seen in her waking life. Now dream and reality fitted over each other with the perfection of a humming-bird's beak slipping into a flower. And she heard his voice saying, with the weight of meaning that only thoughtless words can carry, 'It helps you find your way when you get lost.'

She felt certainty flowing back into her in a tide of strength.

'The dream was true!' she said exultantly. 'It was pointing to him!'

More than that, it was he. The clear face, the frail, searching point: they were his essence, his soul: she held it in her hands, a shining and precious thing. And was she going to let it be broken?

She stood up on the tree-stump and felt the dawn wind flurry around her. As before, the voice of the wind was speaking to her, impetuous, impatient, making much clear that had been needlessly hidden. Had not she and John Smith pledged each other to stop the battle? Had anything happened that was a reason to break that pledge? And who was best placed to keep it? The one who was bound or the one who was free? The one who was silenced or the one who had a voice to speak? Was he to have passed the dark hours believing that she had given up their promise and abandoned him to death so easily? What was she afraid of? At the worst, she could die too. The wind had blown away all those strange clouds. Strange clouds, indeed!

Her path was clear: everything in her pointed the same way. Whatever the odds against her, she must hazard them. Her heart soared.

She glanced up and saw a fiery glow in the eastern sky. 'Sunrise!' Joy and fear gripped her both at once.

'It's not too late, child!' said Grandmother Willow.

Pocahontas turned with the compass in her hands until the black arrow came to rest on a black needle-point and moved no more. She knew where to go. Only one thing mattered: to get there in time.

'You know your path: now follow it!' hissed the wind in the leaves behind her.

Pocahontas leaped off the stump and ran. She ran as she had never done before, with speed and perfection, dodging roots and branches, splashing through pools of water, leaping from rock to rock without breaking her stride. The red in the sky intensified until it seemed the colour of blood. The blood roared in her ears. Her shadow sprang out long beside her. To the pounding of her footsteps, her mind, tightened to its effort like a drawn bowstring, thrummed its prayer to the spirits:

'Eagle, help my feet to fly,

Mountain, help my heart be great ...'