The Main Village
Portents and signs were Kekata's specialty. And for the past day or so, none of them had been favorable. This consistent negativity troubled the old healer deeply. For months now, he had been getting unfavorable signs-they weren't just in his divination and spell workings, though-the very world around them portended a harsh winter.
It had been a hard year: Try as they might to prevent any discord, there were grumblings about unfair trading practices with the settlers; each side complaining that they'd been ripped off and taken in by people willing to take advantage of them. This simmering unease put a damper on their communal efforts to stockpile food and supplies. Now, merchants counted twice and looked over their shoulders, and now Powhatan nation delegates resented what they felt was patronizing behavior.
During the summer a fever had swept through the villages, but had not killed anyone.
Earlier in the year, three young men from the neighboring Massawomec village had drowned in the fast-moving river that was near one of the hunting camps.
There was a rumor going around Jamestown that some strangers who had moved in were actually Spanish spies. No one could substantiate this, of course; but tempers were short in Jamestown and Henrico lately. And, speaking of the latter: Governor Dale had petitioned all of the villages to send some of their young children to the school at Henrico, but no one had complied yet, even after Pocahontas herself had signed on to the idea.
Yes, it had been a rough year. Kekata had been looking forward to an easy end to it, but now it looked as if the year would not go quietly or gently.
The snowstorm was an especially bad sign; to have one this early in hunting season spelled a dangerous, hungry winter for sure.
During the snowstorm, word had spread from the old healer to the chief, who then passed it to his council, who then passed it to the warriors: take a count of people who were out hunting, and go find them if necessary when the snow ceased. The final count was eight: four groups of two. One of those comprised the chief's favorite daughter and the man she loved.
It wasn't really that the great Powhatan loved one daughter, Pocahontas, more than he loved the rest of his children; it was that Pocahontas was the only child of his beloved first wife. And his admiration and love for Pocahontas had only grown over the years, as she had brought the people back to their base of rational wisdom in dealing with the English. He saw the deep love she and her Englishman, John Smith, had for one another, and it inspired him to be a better father, a better leader-more fair, more patient and more willing to listen.
He had been waiting for John Smith to ask his permission to marry his daughter, but that day had not yet come.
The old chief stood, wrapped in a heavy woolen trade blanket, in snow that nearly reached his knees, frowning, trying to push worry away. And now that day might not come, he thought.
He had been waiting, three days and a night now, for his daughter to come home.
The Hunting Cabin
The scene was red chaos.
John had certainly seen his fair share of blood before, had been covered in his own.
But fate was being especially cruel now as the blood on his hands was not his own. He would have preferred it that way, that Ratcliffe would have stabbed him over and over again, not her-not someone so young and vibrant and strong, not someone whose absence caused actual pain in his chest.
Some of her last words haunted him, over and over in his head: I am not acting like a child ... I know, I know: when you were my age you'd been seduced by some old lady ...
Old lady not quite-he needed to finesse the stories he told her so that she would get critical details right in the retelling. At the time of his dalliance with the daughter of the Turkish sultan, she had been approaching her thirties, like he was now, thank-you-very-much. Did this mean Pocahontas thought of him as old?
The blood all over his hands, and smeared across her body from which it spilled at frightening speed and volumes, was hers.
Hers.
Marry me, he had whispered just hours before. Marry me ...
And now she was dying in his arms and he was remembering their conversations, some of their most absurd points, at that.
On the edges of this little scene, as Pocahontas lay bleeding with John Smith trying desperately to save her, lurked the forces of darkness, congregating at the bidding of the man who had summoned them-John Ratcliffe, who lay grazed but not seriously wounded, playing dead. The Darkness shielded him from bullets' deadly power, from the blade of John's hunting knife that Pocahontas had raised to his throat, prepared to slit it open.
The Darkness appeared, first, as a wavy black mist that faded to gray as forms gradually appeared.
The Darkness had shielded him, guided him, for this long, and it had not yet let him down. John Ratcliffe knew that pacts with the demonic had their price, had their risks, but he was all too willing to go along. He peered over at the pathetic scene, not making a sound, hardly daring to breathe. He could feel dull pain where the bullets had deflected off of the breastplate he wore under his clothing, but he tried desperately to stay quiet.
The young savage woman's life was draining out at rapid speed; her lips were blue, her skin losing its healthy flush. Small, weak sounds escaped her lips, pleas for help and cries and whimpers. She began to choke, and at this the man who was kneeling beside her, covered in her blood as he tried to save her, could not hold back an anguished cry of grief and impending loss.
Quietly as he could, Ratcliffe eased himself up from the hunting cabin's freezing floor, and gripped the blood-slicked knife. But he needn't worry, no, not at all-the attention of the Englishman he hated was wholly on the savage. He would never see it coming.