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CHAPTER 11

'Well, so now what shall we do?' asked Richard Clovelly, speaking for the other eight men who gazed at John Smith, feeling indignant or ridiculous according to their natures.

'Put everything down and get your breath,' was all John could think of to say. 'It's safe. There really is no one here.'

He could feel that he was crimson in the face. The embassy was an obvious necessity for them all, yet somehow it had become identified with him, and its failure made him personally lose face far more than any of the others. This seemed the very worst thing that could have happened. He had had a premonition of it as soon as they came out on the hillside above the village and saw no one in the fields or among the houses. Even then he had really known that there was no one left, not even a group of warriors lying in ambush; it would have been very difficult to conceal an ambush completely from watchers above the low, scattered buildings, and the village unmistakably breathed an air of deserted peace. But of course they could not risk assuming that it was deserted. So they had taken endless precautions in approaching; had stopped in single file just out of range of the huts for several minutes while John Smith shouted conciliatory words and the herald waved the flag; had refrained, against the inclinations of several of the party, from firing their guns to flush out any ambushers; had circled their way round the edge of the village into the middle, peering behind every hut and keeping their escape routes open; and nothing had happened. Even when they stood in what seemed to be the centre, if the place had one – an open space surrounded by uncouth carved wooden pillars – they had kept up their guard for some minutes, in case the Indians chose this moment to attack from hiding-places among the trees or the fields. Still nothing happened.

Since dawn they had all been nerving themselves for a fight or a confrontation, wondering what sort of men they were going to meet, whether they would find any understanding or, at the other extreme, lose their lives. In proportion to the pitch to which they had screwed themselves and the precautions they had taken, the anticlimax seemed even more of a mockery. It was hard for John Smith not to think that even an ambush from which only one or two escaped alive would have been preferable to this. At least it would have confirmed that their efforts had been necessary. They were all alive and safe and could return another day, but in the meantime he had been made to look a complete fool. He silently cursed everyone and everything: the accusing, perplexed faces that surrounded him; pompous fire-breathing Ratcliffe; the thick-headed natives, refusing to take their best chance of survival; the girl who had seduced him away from yesterday's task; himself, for ever becoming involved in the expedition at all.

'I suppose we've got to carry the whole lot back again now,' muttered one of the men who had been carrying the chest, as he edged his fingers from under it in the dust and straightened up.

'Was this really the place, Captain Smith?' said Thomas Rowe timidly from the edge of the circle.

John came within a hair's breadth of cursing aloud, but a last atom of humour saved him. Good old Thomas; he must have thought someone was sure to say it and it had better be him. Silly young ass.

'You wouldn't think so, would you?' he replied kindly. 'Quiet enough. But just look round.' He stirred a pile of ashes in the middle of the circle with his foot, and smoke rose from a few glowing embers left at its core. 'They must have gone this morning. They must just have decided they didn't want to meet us.'

'Run away,' enlarged Lon, and whistled. 'Well, if it's as easy as that ...'

'It won't be,' said John sharply. 'They'll be back. Depend on it, all this means is that they don't want to make a bargain. Or at least not yet, after yesterday. We shall have plenty more trouble.' He pointed to the partly built stockade which could be seen beyond the houses. 'That doesn't look as if they were about to give up.'

'What are we going to do, then?' asked Thomas in a low voice. The question looked further into the future than it had when Sir Richard first asked it. The truth of the matter was starting to come home to them all.

John considered for a moment. 'We'd better take a look round, now that we're here. But not all of us. Lon and Josiah, come with me. The rest of you stay here with Sir Richard. Be quiet and respectful and leave everything as you find it. But study the buildings and the way they lie to the fields and the river. That may be the best use we can make of this visit now.'

'Yes,' said one of the men. 'If they won't stay to talk, Governor Ratcliffe'll be wanting to swat them out of the way with no talking.'

Yes, thought John, he's quite sure to want to, and that's what I'm studying for. Plan of attack. Having a bet each way, are you, John Smith? He said nothing.

The buildings of the village were strange: humped, grey affairs of strips of bark on frameworks of bowed branches, the smallest so low and dark that it was hard to imagine people creeping inside. Those that had fireplaces had nothing more than holes in the roof to let the smoke out. Floors were beaten earth. Yet there was little of the muck and stink of a group of English peasant homes. It seemed to be because there were no animals. No hens' feathers, no pig wallows, no dribbles of cow dung in between the houses, and yet there was no lack of food. Hundreds of huge club-shaped ears of yellow grain were spread to dry on wooden racks. Fish and strips of meat were drying in the sun on frames near the river. Flies buzzed over these and around middens of shells and animal bones. John Smith caught his men, and himself, looking at the food as wistfully as dogs under a table. It was uppermost in all their minds that if the Indians had stayed, they themselves might have eaten well that night.

Their circuit of the village merely confirmed that there was not a soul there. At a landing-place at the river's edge there were a few canoes lying about, but the churned-up silt and shingle showed the marks of many more.

Back at the ring of posts most of the men were standing at watch around the edge, but Richard Clovelly, Nick Gates and Thomas were in the middle, examining something on the ground in front of the central pillar.

'What do you make of this, Captain Smith?' asked Sir Richard. It was an assortment of clay and stone beads of different colours. They had been strung on a thong, but it was broken and some were scattered in the dust.

'Where did it come from?' asked John.

'It was hung on that post,' said Sir Richard, pointing above his head. The top of the post was carved in the form of a beaked, glaring face and stuck with bunches of feathers. 'I hooked it down to have a look but it broke.'

'Oh, why did you have to do that?' cried John softly, kneeling down beside the beads. 'Now they'll be insulted. It must mean something to them. What's the use…' He bit back his words. 'I wonder if we can put this right.'

'Be damned to their idols,' said Nick, poking at the pebbles with his foot. 'Should throw down the lot of them.'

'That's enough,' said John Smith sharply. But, looking at the carved face and its companions casting short black shadows in the late morning sun, he almost felt the same.

He started to gather up the beads, but stopped after a moment sensing that he was making himself ridiculous. He let them fall and stood up. 'It's time to go,' he said. 'But we should leave something. Not all our presents, just a token and maybe something holy, to show that we understand that this is their temple.'

Sir Richard unclasped the chest. 'How much?' he asked. 'Money, or a trinket?'

'This'll do,' said John, lifting out a necklace of silver-gilt links and draping it half idly around the wooden pillar. 'Maybe they'll accept it as payment for the broken one.' A thought struck him. 'There's no gold here,' he said.

'Eh?'

'No gold anywhere. No metal. The temples in Hispaniola were full of gold, the Spaniards said. But here it's all stones and shells.'

'They'll have taken it with them,' said Sir Richard doubtfully after a moment.

'I wonder,' said John. 'Come over,' he called to the men. 'Time to move.'

They crowded round, cautiously beginning to smile and talk. John called them to order again. 'Has anyone got any holy medals, a cross, an agnus-dei or anything like that?'

There was a moment's silence. 'We're not allowed to have them these days, you know that,' muttered somebody.

'Oh come, we're far enough from the courts here,' said John. 'Has anyone got one?'

But nobody admitted to it. In the end John decided simply to leave an extra gift, a small inlaid box with a few silver coins inside, at the foot of the pillar. Some of the men were inclined to grumble at parting with so much when it seemed unlikely they would get anything in return, but they were too eager to be gone to want to make a sticking point of it.

John had been undecided about something all the time they had been there, and came to a decision only when they were almost ready to leave. 'Sir Richard,' he said. 'Will you report to Governor Ratcliffe when you get back? I ought to stay here awhile by myself.'

The men who had already been bending to pick up the chest straightened up, and everyone looked at him speechless.

'I think the Indians are watching us,' he went on as casually as he could, 'and have avoided meeting us because they are afraid; they'll be less afraid of one man alone than of the whole crowd of us.'

'Wait a minute,' said Sir Richard to the men. He took John aside and said in a low voice:

'Captain Smith, don't do this. You're needed. Ten of us, we could cut our way out of an attack, but one man alone ... what if they take you hostage? What are we supposed to do then?'

'Whatever you would have done in any case,' said John. 'But I don't think that will happen. They will want to know us. We must give them time.'

'What am I going to say to the governor?'

'Just tell him what happened. And remind him of my orders this morning. No one is to go out of sight of camp or fire a shot until I get back. Please be very plain about that, Sir Richard: those are battle orders. Don't worry if I'm not back tonight; these things take time. Just wait. If I'm not back by dark tomorrow, then you can suppose that the Indians are holding me prisoner and do as you think best. And please will you take this for me?' He held out his musket to Sir Richard.

Sir Richard took it mechanically, staring hard. 'You're mad, but they all say it works for you. All right, if you must you must.' He turned back to the men. 'Get ready to march,' he shouted, 'we're leaving. Captain Smith is staying here.'

'Go carefully back to camp the way you came,' said John at once. 'God send I'll see you in the evening with better news. Don't be downhearted. Rome wasn't built in a day.'

'Good luck, Captain,' said one or two of the men.

'Captain Smith,' said Thomas suddenly, going red in the face.

'Yes, Thomas?

'Can I stay with you, sir?' he blurted out.

'No,' said John coolly. 'If I needed anyone I'd have said so.'

'But, sir…'

'You heard what I said. Don't think you can dodge a day's work at camp that easily. Get gone, boy.'

Thomas flinched. 'Yes, sir,' he said, shouldered his musket and turned away without another word.

I'll make it right with him later, thought John as he watched the men jostle into order and troop away. I hope he didn't think I really thought he wanted to dodge his work. Though he might want to stay out of the governor's way ... If nothing comes of this, I'll have to do some hard arguing with the governor tonight. Maybe it would have been better to go back and get it done at once, before he starts making plans of his own. But if this works, it'll be much the best. It had better work.

He stayed standing in the ring of posts, looking after his men. They drew out of sight and earshot, and silence settled down. At first he felt a peculiar relief and lightness at being alone again. But an eerie feeling of being watched overtook him almost at once. It could not have been called a feeling of danger, and it did not frighten him. Rather, it made him feel self-conscious. Alone in a place in which he did not belong, he felt as if there must be eyes disapprovingly noting his every action.

The first thing he did was to go back to re-threading the broken necklace. A sense of folly and futility made him want to get it over as quickly as possible: for some reason he wanted more than anything not to be discovered handling those beads. He did his best, but he did not know in what order they had been strung; one bead was broken and after he had tied the ends and hung the string back over the statue's head, he noticed two more that had rolled further away to the feet of another column. He shrugged and did not pick them up.

It would clearly be impertinent to stay in the ring of posts, and besides there was no shade. He withdrew to find a better place to wait. Walking down to the river's edge, he took a drink of water. From there he could clearly see the largest building in the village, on a rise overlooking the water. He went up to it through the barred shadows of a grove of tall, spindly cedar trees. He had glanced into it before; now for a second time he lifted the decorated hide that hung over the doorway, stepped behind it and waited for his eyes to adjust to the dim grey light inside. He spent some time gazing at the aisled rows of posts, tensioned as if in a great wooden tent by a network of intricately knotted, plaited ropes. At the far end was a raised platform with a large carved seat against the back wall. He took deep breaths of the acrid smells of smoke and human bodies. This is where they would have taken us, he thought, if they'd wanted to talk. A grand meeting-house if ever I saw one. This is the place to wait. He went back outside and sat carefully down against the wall, near the door.

He felt more at ease sitting decently waiting with his back against something solid than he had done while walking about. He sat with his legs stretched out in front of him, resting but alert. If they're watching, he thought, they must see now that I mean no harm. If they'd been going to attack they would have done by now. I'm sure they will show themselves. Maybe in about half an hour.

Would they challenge him from far off, or would they be at his elbow before he knew it? Would he see the chief at once, or be questioned by underlings? He tried to imagine the possibilities, but with no real fear of anything worse than embarrassment. He trusted completely in his own charm to turn the encounter his way, and knew there was no point in planning what to say; taking such meetings moment by moment had always worked for him in the past.

However, he had been busy for so long that his mind would not at once stop suggesting tasks. Turned aside from the meeting with the Indians, it wondered what to do later. If he got back that night, he should make sure there was a drier place for all the powder and battle gear, make some time for training next day, see that the sick men were being properly looked after ... Would the mate and Sir Richard think to do it, if he weren't there? Stop, he told himself. You won't forget any of that; you won't get the chance. Keep your mind on where you are.

Then he wondered if it would be a good moment to have something to eat. He had some biscuit with him and began to feel hungry as soon as he thought of it. But would it look disrespectful? How to know? I'll eat in a few minutes, he thought. Not right away. It's not noon yet.

To pass the time he looked over his shoulder at the carvings on the door-posts. They showed heads emerging from stiff half-formed bodies, with faces as glaring and bird-like as the ones on the pillars where they had left the necklace. What can these people's religion be like? he wondered. There are wicked faces on the outside of the church where I grew up, but there are kinder ones on the inside. Or there were, when I was a boy, before the new priest finally got rid of them. I don't know. Maybe if you looked inside most of us you would see that our gods' real faces were still just as bad.

But is this the best they can do? It looks as if they spend all their time afraid, calling on demons or hiding from demons. I am sure she is afraid of nothing. Pocahontas. She knows no demons; there was none of that in her face. Yet she is one of these people.

He had been avoiding thinking of Pocahontas all morning. Now he was overrun by a mixture of feelings about her, most of them doubtful and discouraging. How easily they had seemed to meet, alone there at the edge of the forest; but what did it all have to do with this village, silently breathing its complicated, alien life? The face of the bird-god seemed to have replaced the face of Pocahontas in his mind, so that he could not easily recall it. At the same time he remembered her body clearly, and was disturbed by prickings of desire so immediate that he could not imagine how he could have failed to act on them when he was with her. Then he remembered the proud way she had held her head, and how carefully she had said his name, and felt ashamed of himself. Nevertheless, he could not resist a fancy that suggested itself to him, in which she said his name like that over and over again.

Then he fell asleep.