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Disclaimer: in this chapter John Smith, John Ratcliffe, Lon, Ben, Thomas and Wiggins are Disney characters. The rest are my own.

Note: sorry I'm not getting back to Pocahontas yet, I will in the next chapter, but there are just a few more ends to tie up in the English camp. Which I have to admit I find easier.

Babyb26: thanks very much for the review. I may as well warn you now, I'm basically telling the same story as in the movie and keeping the sad ending – it seems to me that in view of how unhappily the colonial adventure turned out in the end for the Indians, anything else would be forced. But it's not completely hopeless. I haven't read the Kupperman book you mention, but have done a bit of basic research on the Internet, e.g. Wikipedia, about Powhatan society. This remains, however, a fantasy romance. I'm just trying to make the story more plausible, not necessarily more authentic.

CHAPTER 9

He arrived at his tent alone; Dawkins had gone over to the ship to settle the watch that would sleep aboard. A small fire in front of the entrance had sunk to embers. John scattered the shellfish on it and began retrieving them with a stick and eating them one by one as soon as the shells opened. The chewy morsels tasted good, but did not add up to much compared to the size of the shells and the work of extracting them.

Footsteps stopped close by. 'Captain Smith?'

'Yes?' said John with his mouth full.

There was no immediate reply. He looked up. The man stood just outside the circle of firelight as if reluctant to show his face, but after a moment John recognised him: Treluswell, the brown-bearded farmer whom he had noticed saying goodbye to his wife on the day they had boarded the ship. John stifled a sigh. Not even for a few minutes while he ate was he to get a rest from difficulties of other men's making. This was one of the men who had been shackled by Ratcliffe, and the one of whom John had been angriest to hear it. He had not the heart to send him away in his evident distress, and yet it was not proper that he himself should get mixed up in the matter at all.

'Sit down,' he said rather constrainedly. 'Have you had anything to eat? Want some of these?' He started raking the rest of the mussels out of the fire.

'Thank you,' muttered the man, and sat down heavily, cross-legged. He took one, but did not eat it.

'Well?' said John.

The man tried to speak, but choked.

'It's all right,' said John. 'I know what happened.'

They glanced at each other and John went on:

'Come on, don't take it to heart. A man was hurt. A punishment squares things. It was you that got it this time; it might just as well have been someone else. It's over and done with now.'

'I've been working with trees twenty year,' the man got out. 'No one ever said I didn't look after my mates the same as I looked after myself. Will Kemp was my friend. Now he'll never work again. That's bad enough without – without ...'

'Yes, it's bad. But he won't blame you…'

'Yes, he will. I can't show him my face after this. He'll think it was my fault same as the others…'

'You make too much of it. If there's a punishment everyone has to be treated the same. It doesn't mean…'

'Master Hales wasn't.'

'What?'

'Master Hales was in charge of the job,' said the man, his voice hardening. 'I told him she was a big one and we needed two more men on the ropes to bring her down, and he said there wasn't time. So Will got it. And Governor Ratcliffe asked no questions of Master Hales.' He paused, then gathered courage and said angrily, 'I've never been treated that way and I won't put up with it for no one. Not even for you, Captain Smith.'

John's mind sprang to the alert, as if he himself were braced against the falling tree. 'No, by hell, not for me,' he said sharply. 'What do you think this is? A schoolyard? Is this the time to come whimpering, "It wasn't me, it was him"? If any one of us puts a foot wrong we could all be dead by next week. Is that what you have in mind?'

'I only want what's fair,' said the man sullenly.

John said nothing for a moment, then asked, 'What about the other two? What do they say?'

'Same as me,' said Treluswell quickly.

'I see,' said John. 'Well, you can tell them what I just told you. What's fair can come later. None of you will make the slightest stir about what happened today or there'll be worse than irons to come. Do you understand?'

'Yes,' said the man tightly and started to get to his feet.

'Wait,' said John.

Treluswell stood unwillingly in front of him and John looked up directly into his face. 'Don't do anything foolish,' he went on. 'We are going to need you. You are one of the men I was most glad to have with us, Robert Treluswell, from the day we sailed, and you are still. Nothing will change my opinion. You may take that for what it's worth.'

Treluswell lowered his eyes and stirred the shells on the ground with his foot.

'Today was the first day,' said John more gently. 'There may be years to come. By this time tomorrow we'll know if we can reckon with peace. By next year you may have your own house and your wife and children with you. By then no one will give a rotten fig for what happened today. Look to that. We have to …'

He broke off; Treluswell had turned his back; his shoulders were shaking. 'I'm sorry, man. Don't mind me,' John said after a moment.

The farmer rubbed his sleeve across his eyes and turned back to face John with a twisted smile. 'Every day I've wished I had Margery with me – until today, he said huskily.

Suddenly, to his discomfiture, John felt his own face contract: there had been a stab of feeling inside him. He did not know where it had come from. He half looked away, instinctively ashamed to let it be seen. Then he stood up and put his hand on the other man's arm. 'Yes,' he said, at a loss for further words.

They stood there for a short time. Eventually John said: 'I'm going next to see how Kemp is doing. You want to come with me? Or for me to say anything to him?'

'No, no,' muttered Treluswell. 'Not yet, I mean ...'

'Go and get some rest, then,' John told him. 'Let it go. We can none of us afford to have enemies, not now or for a long time, and Governor Ratcliffe knows it as well as the next man.'

'It's not that,' Treluswell said, still muttering. 'But to make us look like thieves in the stocks ... how can I hold up my head any more?'

'And suppose it had happened to someone else?' asked John. 'What would you be thinking?'

He watched the man's face and saw it clear slightly, as if his mind was taken off his grievance for the first time. At last Treluswell glanced in his eyes and said, almost with surprise, 'Well, I'd probably be thinking it served the bastards right.'

After a moment John allowed himself to smile; Treluswell smiled, smiled more broadly, then gave a cracked laugh. 'That's a mistake you won't make next time, anyway,' said John, laughing too. 'I'd think twice, at least,' said the other.

The joke was soon over. 'Good night,' said John and tried to think of something more he could say, something that would send the man away with the vindication he deserved without undermining the governor. It was impossible. In fact, he had already said too much. In the end he merely asked, 'Do you know which tent Kemp's in?', and Treluswell pointed it out to him.

It was a large one on the edge of camp, and there John found the surgeon mixing a draught for two more men who lay there with the fever several of the crew had had. The two sick men were reasonably comfortable on beds with bases of planks and brushwood, but the injured man was still lying on a rough stretcher on the bare ground. His eyes were closed and his face was dreadful to see; he groaned with every intake of breath.

'He can't lie all night like that,' said John. 'Is there no one to make a proper bed for him?'

'I tried to get someone after it happened,' said the surgeon angrily, 'but the carpenter kept them all at work until sunset, and then I thought – You should have heard what I had to say to him to get these other two off work. There are at least another six men who shouldn't be working.'

John looked hard at him. He was exhausted too. Not a slacker, but not sufficiently practised at getting his way with men driven by Ratcliffe. 'It's too dark to go finding any more wood now,' John said. 'The best thing will be if I move my bed in here and he uses it for the night. Then we'll see what we can do in the morning. And listen – if you have trouble getting a job done, come to me, or if I'm not there ask Mate Dawkins. He'll always be able to find a man for a job like that.' John had already noticed that Dawkins had made no mistake in the matter of their own sleeping arrangements. For himself, it didn't make much odds, as he was not expecting to go to bed until dawn anyway.

He bent over Kemp and touched his hand on the good side. The man's eyes opened reluctantly. 'We are going to make you more comfortable in a few minutes,' said John. 'Bear up. Things can only get better.' The man's face relaxed for a moment in acknowledgment; then he closed his eyes again.

John felt again that inward flicker which he had felt with Treluswell. What was happening to him? He had always been dutifully sympathetic to his men's troubles, but he had never before had these moments of uncomfortably vivid experience of the suffering he was trying to relieve. It was as though the boundaries between himself and other people had lost their firmness. The girl beside the waterfall – she had touched the gnat and the rock, and then touched him; from that light touch something inside him was dissolving. He wanted to cry. Afraid, he did his best to stifle the feeling. There was so much that had to be done. He had no strength to spare for this.

John went thankfully to the mindless task of dismantling and moving his bed, and called Thomas and Ben over from the watch to help him. They came, and stayed to help lift the injured man onto the bed once it had been made up with leather coverings and blankets. Thomas was frightened by the man's pain, but Ben chatted and joked, not obtrusively, but with a warmth that John could see was doing Kemp good. He had a gentle touch too. That was what was needed above all, and John at once arranged for Ben to be at the surgeon's call during the night.

He walked back to the patrol line alone with Thomas. 'So you had your first taste of action today,' he said, angling.

Thomas was his main hope for a candid account of the fight with the Indians, but again he was disappointed. The lad was sunk in despondency.

'I made a mess of it, Captain Smith,' he burst out. 'I don't know if I'll ever make a soldier – doing a thing like that ...'

'Like what exactly?' asked John, suppressing a smile. 'I doubt you changed the issue much, whatever it was.'

'I ...' It seemed Thomas could hardly bear to confess, but at last he did. 'I got a musket ... I was running with it and I looked round and tripped. The gun went off ... it was pointing backwards and ... I nearly hit the governor.'

John was glad it was dark. 'And did he notice?'

'That's the worst of it,' said Thomas, nearly crying. 'I stayed where I was, and when the fighting finished he came up to me and said…' He did not repeat what Ratcliffe had said, but ended: 'He'll never have any use for me after this. How am I ever going to get on if I do something like this on the first day? And after I fell overboard…'

'Now listen, Thomas,' said John, 'you're not the only one to be feeling that way this evening. You can see that, can't you?' They had reached the fence, but John stopped walking before they came up to the rest of the watch. 'Governor Ratcliffe can't afford to be down on everyone who makes a mistake. It's not many men who do gloriously in their first battle.'

'I suppose not,' said Thomas, grateful but clearly unconvinced. John did not blame him. Ratcliffe's displeasure was not so easily forgotten.

They moved on and came upon Lon and another man peering out into the dark between the fence posts.

'Captain Smith,' said the second man, turning round and nudging Lon.

'Captain,' said Lon and saluted. 'It's all quiet so far. And here's the conquering hero back again,' he said to Thomas, thumping him between the shoulders. 'Have you been telling Captain Smith all about your doings this afternoon, Thomas?'

'Oh, shut up,' said Thomas in a high voice.

'Nar, I mean it,' said Lon. 'It was the best shot anyone got off all day. Governor Ratcliffe jumped so high in the air you could see the old Susan's masthead between the frills on his breeches.'

A day before, the others would have laughed at this. Now both Thomas and the other man glared silently at Lon. John pretended not to notice, but he could feel that their embarrassment was not due to his presence alone. The whole atmosphere had changed. Now that Ratcliffe was in command, he had made himself feared.

Lon brazened it out. 'Well, in my place you'd have more reason to feel a fool,' he said. 'I went to catch an Indian and all I got was this.' He rubbed at a graze on the side of his face. 'Lucky I had a helmet on, or my brains would have got an airing.'

'It might have done them good,' said John. 'You all had orders not to fight the Indians. How did such a thing start?'

He saw Lon and his companion exchange glances. 'Well, no one rightly knows,' said Lon cautiously after a moment. 'We were just working and all of a sudden there was shouting and men running all over. Isn't that right, Nick?'

'Yes,' concurred the other.

Thomas seemed about to say something, but after looking from one to other of the men he kept his mouth shut. John cursed inwardly. Something was being kept from him: not out of a wish to deceive him, but for fear of Ratcliffe. Collusion had spread wordlessly throughout the camp: everyone knew or could guess Ratcliffe's version of events and no one was going to contradict it. Only Dawkins would have been bold enough to, and he had seen nothing. Only Thomas might have been innocent enough, but by now even he had grasped how the land lay. And if John's not knowing whatever it was prejudiced the outcome of the embassy ... Oh well, on their own heads be it. At least he himself was not afraid.

'Do you think they'll attack tonight?' asked Lon, swiping at a moth that brushed close by his head.

'I should very much doubt it,' said John. 'It takes such people longer than a day to decide to do anything. Don't forget, we came here expecting to find Indians. They weren't expecting us. They don't know what on earth we are; they must be scared witless.'

'That fellow this afternoon didn't look scared,' said Lon broodingly. 'Not one bit.'

'All the better,' said John. 'Have you ever noticed that a dog's more likely to bite you if he's scared?'

'What's that?' breathed Thomas.

They all looked where he pointed. Something was moving in the shadows of the forest's edge, creeping purposefully forward from one stump to another. It looked more animal than human, but even with their eyes used to the dark they could not guess its size. They all stared, holding their breath, until the creature was near enough to be caught by a stray gleam of firelight.

'It's all right,' said John. 'I saw one of those today. They're harmless; it's probably come looking for scraps.' The raccoon moved out of sight behind the gatehouse and after a minute they heard a tinkle of shells as it searched one of the dead fires for remnants of supper.

'Can you eat them?' asked Lon, moving a hand to his gun.

'For God's sake don't shoot,' said John hurriedly. 'We'll have the whole camp by the ears. You can try setting snares for them tomorrow night if you've the mind. Now keep watch; I hope you'll have a quiet night. I'm going up to the other end.'

At the far end of the line he found three other men with Richard Clovelly, who was in command of the watch. Sir Richard was the only nobleman on the expedition apart from Ratcliffe. About John's age, big-boned with a red face and sandy eyelashes, he looked more like a farmer than the son of an earl, and it had taken John a good while to realise that there was more to his steadiness than stolidity. He reported sleepily but accurately on his watch, but, as John had feared, was unable to give any new information on the Indian attack.

'I was caught short, Captain,' he said with a grin. 'By the time I got my breeches up the whole thing was over.'

'Can't be helped,' said John.

'Tomorrow – about seeing the Indians. I suppose Governor Ratcliffe isn't going?'

'No. We have to keep our trump card up our sleeves.'

'Well then, I'd better come.'

'I should be very glad of it,' said John, heartened.

'I'll leave the talking to you, mind. But I can wear my necklace and look pretty. And watch your back at the same time.'

'Thank you,' said John, sincerely but vaguely. At the word 'necklace' he had suddenly remembered the one that the girl had worn, and the way the plaques of iridescent shell lay smoothly on the skin above her collarbone ... Would he see her next day? And if he did, would it be the same? A village girl among the others, peeping out of their huts at the men strangers – among smells of fish and hides and woodsmoke; her mother pulling her inside ... Perhaps if he did see her, it would make it easier to forget about her. For what could possibly come of it? So he told himself, but he knew that he was wrong. Whatever was coming of it was coming already. There was no turning back.

*****

Governor Ratcliffe sat at his table, with two candles still lit. He had been in his tent for a long time, but made no move to go to bed; he still wore his belt, his chain, his coat and stiff collar, and sat upright, thinking over the events of the day. He pieced together faces and names with everything he had noted and every word he had overheard; who had worked well or badly, the expressions on their faces ... The real experiment was beginning. It would be of great interest to have the same men to deal with over a stretch of months, with no one added and no one taken away. How different from the fleeting world of court, or even of an estate in these unsettled days! None of them could escape his impress. He could study them at leisure and piece them out to fulfil his plans, as a jeweller making a necklace pieces out his little piles of gold and pearls. Yes, gold. Would they find any here? How soon could they begin looking for it in earnest? Gold! Wealth! How could a man like Smith ever comprehend how much one might need it? Damn him and his pussyfooting around with the natives ...

The servant came and stood quietly at the flap of the tent.

'All right, come in,' said Ratcliffe without turning.

'All quiet, sir,' said Wiggins, obeying him. 'There was some whispering around the fire earlier on among a few of the men, but they have all gone in now except the watch.'

He stood at Ratcliffe's elbow; Ratcliffe swivelled round to look at him. 'Any more?'

'Master Treluswell has been to speak to Captain Smith. He laughed at what Captain Smith said to him and they parted with a slap on the shoulder.'

'Hmm. And then?'

'The captain moved his bed into the hospital for Will Kemp. The surgeon says he took Ben Macquarie off the watch to help look after him.' Ratcliffe shifted in his chair. Wiggins continued: 'Then he went with Thomas Rowe to join the watch and he is with them now.'

'I see,' said Ratcliffe after a moment. 'Thank you, Wiggins. That will be all.'

'Would you like any more refreshment, sir?'

'No. I shall retire now and you may go to bed as well. Wake me at dawn, if you please.' He rose heavily and went round the screen to the inner part of the tent, taking one of the candlesticks with him. Wiggins stood still until he was out of sight, and then noiselessly began to clear away plates, cups, notebook and pens, with movements as precise and graceful as they had been the first thing that morning.