Bloodroot

CHAPTER 1 July 1609I had fought this time more bitterly than before with my master of Exeter. He struck me once too often with his whip and, being a young man of almost twenty years, I was seized with a blind rage. I jerked the whip out of his hand, wrapped it around his shriveled neck, and started to haul him up on one of the crossbeams of his shop, but his choking and gagging brought my senses back, and I let him fall to the floor where he cursed me and swore that he would have me thrown in prison that very hour. My rage returned, and I kicked him until he lay unconscious at my feet like a heap of dirty rags. I left his shop and the city of Exeter without stopping to gather my few belongings, and started out for the city of Plymouth where I had a friend who would shelter me until I could find new employment. It was well after dark when I arrived in Plymouth and found my friend, Richard, busy packing his chests. He seemed extremely pleased, not just at my arrival but in what he called his “future prospect” in Virginia. “How wonderful, how prophetic, that you have arrived at this hour! God himself must have guided you, my friend. I tell you truly, Matthew. It is a new promised land, a new Canaan,” he said to me while packing away his books in a smaller chest. “We are the ones chosen to leave this vile and sinful land. Virginia will be our new Paradise, where men can live the way their Creator intended: in goodness and charity.” I had always known Richard to be a dreamer, but this, going to a wilderness like Virginia? I wondered if he had not lost his senses from too much reading and studying. “I have heard of this place called Virginia, Richard, and I have heard that it is inhabited by naked savages who think nothing of bashing a man’s brains out or of eating their own people. And I have heard that this place is often as cold as it is here in England and as hot as it is in Spain, and that the air is filled with many sicknesses.” “Rumors, gossip, exaggerations!” Richard said, pulling a pamphlet out of his book chest and thrusting it at me. “Read this,” he said, excited. “It was written by one of the London Company’s own members who has himself been to Virginia many times.” I read through the pamphlet and returned it to him. “It truly does sound like Paradise, Richard, but perhaps it sounds too good.” “But it was written and published with the consent of the London Company. What reason would they have to lie about it? What profit would there be? Surely, they would be found out if they were not telling the truth.” “I admit that what you say makes sense, but I don’t want to leave England. I am not the scholar that you are. Vice and corruption do not offend me the way they do you.” “Then think of it this way. You are in need of employment. You have broken the terms of your apprenticeship by running away. You have assaulted your master. Good God, Matthew, you could go to prison for many years. And if you survive that, what would you do?” His reasoning was sound. The very thought of prison stunned me into silence, and as long as I remained in England, my old master, Dorn, would not rest until he saw me behind bars. I was swept by a feeling of danger. I realized then how important my freedom was to me and how precious was my life. Few survive more than three years in the King’s prison. “Come with me, Matthew. Virginia will be our new kingdom. It will be our chance to begin the world over again, the way it should be, a place full of love and happiness. As for the savages, they are only children in a Garden of Eden, waiting for the light of Christianity. You see, Matthew,” he moved closer to my face, his breathing short, his eyes dancing with excitement, “this is our opportunity to do what is right.” I turned away, hoping the gesture would calm his passion. “Do you have any ale?” I asked. He stood up at once, erect as if I had slapped him across the face. “I do not need ale now, Matthew. I have discovered that God’s own purest water is enough for me. My only interest now is in food and drink for the spirit.” “Well, if you don’t mind, Richard, I would like a tankard of good ale and some food for my body.” “I have some bread and sausage newly purchased today.” “Thank you, my friend, but I would like to find a tavern and think on what you have proposed.” The tavern was crowded with men like myself, on the move, without prospects, men on the watch for opportunity. I spotted a sailor seated with several other men at a corner table. The sailor was using tobacco, as were most of the men in the place, but he was smoking it in an unusual pipe, a short thing made out of dark clay, brightly painted and with a large bird’s feather fixed at the end. I went over to them and asked if I could join their table. The sailor wanted to know for what purpose, and I explained that I was thinking of planting in Virginia and that from the look of his pipe, he was a man who might be acquainted with those parts. He laughed aloud, and I could see in the dim light of the candles that he had only a few teeth, and those were stained and crooked, and that his left eye was as white as marble. The other two men looked at me suspiciously. “Aye, lad, sit down,” the sailor shouted. He slapped the bench next to him with a gnarled hand. “I will tell you all you wish to know about that heathen land, but me throat be hot and wishes to be cooled by the sweet elixir of this fine tavern’s ale.” I waved for the barmaid and ordered four tankards, a deed which would considerably reduce my finances. “Now,” the sailor said, leaning back against the tavern’s wall and drawing smoke from his pipe. “Why would a lad such as yourself, a young gentleman, if I’m any judge of men, wish to go to such a place?” “I am a carpenter, sir,” I said, trying to appear older than my years, “and work is not easy to find in England these days. I have heard that certain worthy gentlemen of these parts have set out to build a town in that land and would most likely have need of a man of my trade.” The sailor nodded, and then, seeing the barmaid coming with both of her arms full of tankards, smiled happily. Almost as soon as our maid had sat the tankard before him, he buried his face in it for a long time. The other two men followed his example. I watched their Adam’s apples work in unison as they gulped down the ale. “Aye, yes,” the sailor said, finally setting his drink before him and wiping the foam from his beard with the back of his hand. “They do have need of men with your skill in Virginia. They have need of every man they can get.” The sailor laughed heartily and so did the other two men. “And God knows,” he continued, “there is timber enough to build not only a town but a hundred cities the size of London. There is hardly a square yard where a good-sized tree does not grow. But for every man cutting a tree there be four and sometimes six to guard him against the bloody, throat-cutting savages. And often that is not enough, for there must be a hundred savages to every one Englishman. Nay, I say even a thousand savages to one of our men. What is wanting in Virginia is an English army, and not the merchants and gentlemen who are presently there. By God, as much as I despise those popish swine of Spain, I’ll say one thing good for them, they know how to plant a colony. None of this cowardly, weak-bellied, hands-off policy toward the savages for them.” The sailor leaned closer to me. “If you want to find your fortune in Virginia, my lad, first learn to fight.” “But that is true enough for any man,” said one of the other men. “Aye, it’s true enough, but in Virginia it is always your life you’re fighting for. There is scarce any law even among our own men and none among the savages, save the hatchet and the arrow. But for a man who can use a sword and a musket, Virginia is a vast, rich land waiting to be claimed. You could be a king, my lad.” “Or at least a lord,” the other man said. They all laughed good-naturedly, not meaning to offend. “Sir,” said I to the sailor, “you are certainly a fighting man yourself. Why have you not claimed your share of this new land?” He laughed again, spitting some ale on his beard. “True enough. I’ve done my share of fighting, but it was never for myself. It was always some quarrel between princes, and you see how I am rewarded.” He pointed to his dead eye. “Fighting is for young men such as yourself. We old men stand aside and pick at the spoils and tell everyone how glorious it all was when it is over.” “Will your ship be taking the planters to Virginia?” I asked. “Aye, that she will. Diamond is her name, and a good ship she is too, the luckiest ship that I ever served on. But I will not be aboard her. The sea has taken her toll of me. I am off to my little cottage in old North Devon, there to live happily among my sheep and cows and look out upon the sea from my window.” There was much laughter at the sailor’s table after this. I ordered ale to be brought to our table until I had spent my last shilling. I listened with more than common interest as the sailor told stories of the foreign lands he had seen and the many strange wonders in these far-off places. But my thoughts were on Virginia, which during the course of the evening, began to be more favorable than the punishment and starvation that were sure to be mine if I remained in England. In the early hours of the morning, I took my leave of the sailor and his friends with much good cheer and happy farewells and walked, half-dazed with ale and thoughts of Virginia, back to Richard’s room. I woke him from a sound sleep and said that I would go with him and that he must arrange passage for me. He wanted to know how much money I had, and I confessed that it was all in the hands of the tavern keeper. Richard opened the chest where he had packed his clothes, dug out his purse and checked its contents. “There is just enough for passage for us both,” he said triumphantly. “Richard, I’ll pay you back as soon as I can.” “Don’t worry yourself, Matthew. We will not need money in Virginia. Come,” he said, pulling on his shirt and britches. “I am sick of the waiting. The Diamond is at the dock now and will be sailing not many hours from now. Help me with my chests, Matthew. We will be the first on the wharf, and I will arrange passage for you with the Captain.” I had never before seen Richard in such a haste. We placed his book chest on top of his clothes chest and together we bore them, with much effort, through the streets of Plymouth to the dock where our ship was still secured. Richard was correct. So far as I could determine, we were the only passengers yet to arrive. There were a few drunken sailors lying around the wharf, some sleeping, some yelling at phantoms in the night. I waited, sitting on a low group of pilings, while Richard went aboard the ship to speak with the Captain. Except for the few shouting sailors, it was a strangely quiet night. The ship, with her fresh burden of supplies, rode in the still water like a majestic swan, asleep. The city of Plymouth seemed devoid of its human inhabitants and as empty and useless as a beach with no shells. The many scents of spring filled the air, and even dulled the occasional wave of putrefied stench from the harbor. I lost myself in the sound of the water lapping up against the pilings and, for a terrible few moments, felt the old fears that I had known in childhood filling my breast. The fear that one morning I would wake up and find all those I knew gone, dead perhaps, leaving me completely alone. It was an icy feeling that started from the inside, as though I had drunk cold water too fast. That fear had come true for me a few years ago, shortly after I had been apprenticed to Master Dorn. It remained for me the clearest memory for many years—the messenger riding up to Mr. Beanie’s shop and informing me that my parents had died in the fire of their house, and that I would be required by the solicitor to sign various papers regarding the remainder of their estate.