| |
Somewhere in the Atlantic, 1700
A path of silver satin emanated from the aura, surrounding the blazing moon, across the sea toward Jacques. The saltiness of the water clustered in his nose, seasoning the journey as the vessel rocked slowly from side to side in the lull of the waves tonight. He leaned back against the mast, watching the horizon for the approach of his future with each passing moment. The excited titter of French, which danced through his ears from the other passengers by daylight, was absent now. Only the lapping of the waves against the hull and the creaking of the wood, giving in to the power of the sea, offered their gentle serenade.
His mother would appreciate such beauty, though when the weather hissed about the stern throwing up the sea and wrapping it in a prison of tempestuous winds she would pray for land. No, she would not endure a passage with the ease that he did and ease was a relative term, for even Jacques had suffered the nauseating powers of a lurching boat and feared that it would snap in two under the mighty and merciless winds.
No, it was better that he was alone. His parents he feared, though not feeble, were too fragile for the crossing. His mother's eyes were framed by creases and his father's shoulders seemed thinner, when he had told them goodbye at the docks. When had they aged? For a moment he had doubted his decision to leave, but a look in his mother's eyes soon convinced him to carry through his plans. He had not noticed the effects of the years' advance in his daily life with them. When he had taken in each detail of their faces to carry with him, the images merged to produce a portrait in his mind that had been unnoticed before.
Of course, he was not alone. The painted lady smiled at him often on his voyage, as he unwrapped her to peer into her loveliness. His mother had said she had been a part of the family for many years and he wondered if the woman depicted were some distant relative. His family had handled silks for many generations and his uncle's establishment, already successful, was sure to strengthen with silk dresses becoming the fashion for far greater numbers than before. The women in his family, he presumed, had always worn silks. Perhaps, he looked into the eyes of some great-grandmother now.
He took a biscuit from his pocket and gnawed at it. His appetite, difficult to satisfy on land, had become unquenchable at sea. The biscuit was hard and hurt his teeth as he bit into it and, what was worse, it tasted of sawdust. No doubt the rats, which he had seen aboard, would enjoy the food more but he did not have the luxury of being picky with his rations. Reaching into his pocket he pulled a similar shape out. It was equally as hard, but far superior. The moon's glow caught the gleam of the silver in his hand and magnified its brilliance. His father had placed a bag of silver on the table in front of him in those days shortly after he announced his decision to leave.
“What is this?” Jacques had asked Richard.
“You will need it. Silver has provided our livelihood and silver will give you a new life.”
“But, it's too much. I can't take this,” Jacques had countered.
“Consider it your salary for all your years of work,” his father said, knowing that he had raised a man who was content only in having what he had earned. And so, with the gift of silver from his father, silks from his uncle, clothing, supplies, and the portrait from his mother, Jacques ventured to the other side of the world and the very reaches of the fringe of civilization.
He spun the silver coin through his fingers now, the cold metal contrasting with the warmth of his hand. With his legs stretched before him and the painting resting against them he looked again into her face, drawn to her likeness with an inexplicable need to commune with her.
“Remember,” a voice said. Jacques jumped. The voice had sounded like his mother's but was stronger, more vibrant, and more urgent than a memory. He looked at the painting hard, confused at what had happened.
“Remember that,” the voice said again. In his surprise, the silver coin dropped from his hand and landed with a thud on the deck. Without moving his eyes from the painting he felt around for the silver. His fingers crawled across the deck like a spider. For awhile he felt only wood, but at last the metal pressed into his flesh and he scooped it up and pocketed the coin.
“Remember what?” he whispered, now focusing solely on the portrait and without distraction.
Jacques sat in captivated silence, waiting for the completion of his message but the words did not come. Sleep remained absent for the rest of the night and Jacques continued to stare at the painting. As the first whispers of dawn danced across the horizon, he breathed in the new day. With the comfort of light, he began to doubt that he had heard anything at all the night before. Tiredness crowded his senses, confusing his faculties. Sailing had numbed his perception and he had been thinking of his parents and so it was natural that he would hear his mother's voice. How many times had she told him to remember something before? Hundreds. Thousands.
“Remember to say your prayers.”
“Remember to stop by the workshop after lunch.”
“Remember to deliver this order.”
“Remember where you have come from.”
With the constancy of the new day breaking over him and dissolving the bewitching magic of the night, he wrapped the portrait and laid her aside.
***
“LOOK!” AN EXCITED YOUNG voice called out, with finger fixed firmly on the horizon. A bevy of movement coursed through the ship, as the Huguenots aboard raced forward to see their first glimpses of the New World. Jacques's mind was drawn to a memory he had stored in the annals of adventure. He could almost smell the streets of London; he could fairly taste the bread of Veronique's and Michel's table from that first morning in England. His hand settled on the rail of the ship now, as his memory transformed the rail to his mother's shoulder. He had rested his hand on her when entering London harbor.
“Remember,” he heard a voice within him say, much as it had last night. It was muffled now, though, like an echo of the past recalled rather than the clarity of a conversation as it is spoken.
“What do you think?” a sailor, who had spoken with him throughout the journey, asked now throwing his thumb toward the land to gesture to it. Jacques's eyes traveled the length of the land. Thick gatherings of conifers crowded the shores much as the buildings of London had. In contrast there were no signs of life here, though he knew that settlers had lived in Virginia for almost a hundred years now.
“Plenty of land,” Jacques said, in reply. The sailor chuckled and slapped him on the back.
“Well, you can keep your land. Too wild for me. No, give me the sea and a real town to come home to.”
Jacques nodded in politeness, hoping his own sentiments would not soon echo those of the sailor. What exactly was he doing anyway? He had a strong future of lavish luxury built on the sturdy foundation of dedicated hard work and he had turned his back on it, exchanging it for a life of wilderness. Perhaps, he had been too hasty in his decision. Only a crazy man would chose the barren and dangerous over the established and secure, wouldn't he? For all these doubts that gathered at the corners of his mind, as he stepped from the ship, his footing fell firmly onto the Virginia soil as if it had drawn him to its shores.
As he walked his first steps, his feet wobbled under him confused by the sudden levelness of the ground beneath them. The sun, though shining brightly, seemed smaller when he looked to it and higher in the sky than he was used to. Instead of the competing smells of the city, a slight muskiness mingled with pine clung to his nose. His journey was not yet complete, though, or his destination reached. Governor Nicholson had determined the arriving Huguenots were to settle up the James River farther inland, rather than remaining in the Hampton area where they had docked. Not all the settlers were planning to remain together. Jacques was to travel onto Manakin Town, while many of the others stayed in Jamestown, their first stop up the James River.
Stone buildings dotted the landscape, as Jacques saw his first settlement in Virginia. A fortress, unlike the sturdy walls of the Tower of London, encompassed the settlement with its walls of wood. Jacques knew it had been built as protection against the native tribes and that unfavorable interactions had sometimes taken place. Some of the stories told could turn a grown man's blood to a river of ice, but Jacques paid little attention to the tales. Where he would settle in Manakin Town was on the remains of an old Manacan tribal village and now served as a sector of frontier intended to provide a buffer between the native tribes and the English settlers.
Just how remote the town was became clear as Jacques departed the first capital of Virginia, which had proceeded the current capital of Williamsburg, to press deep into the untamed lands. He carried few belongings and did not have to pay for the transport of his goods since they fit tidily into his bag slung across his broad back, which had bent over the silver that he hammered in his father's shop so many times. Though he had contributed to the pooled funds of the settlers and received a portion of his allotment to buy food and supplies in Jamestown, a considerable number of coins were still tucked safely into the pouch his father had given him and— if he momentarily lost his footing— he would both hear and feel their reassuring jangle.
Life in Virginia was difficult, but steady. Cold winters exasperated illness among many of his fellow settlers and threatened their depleting food supplies. By the first spring, Jacques found his pouch of coins considerably lighter than when he had first arrived. The spring brought with it the first signs of his planting. He nearly jumped for joy at the sight of them, after what had seemed to be a never-ending winter. His house was a skeleton of starved bones compared to the homes he had lived in all his life. The James River parceled the land into desolate outposts of civilization scattered among a savage boundary of life in this New World.
The Old World had sprung from the hands of the farmers and so it seemed life would here as well. The years of training as one of the finest craftsmen of Europe were set aside, temporarily hibernating as the wild beasts and snakes of this land did in the winter, until a time when life dictated that enough was established for them to find a place again.
Symbolically, the portrait did not yet have a place either, because Jacques had decided that it would remain packed until he brought in the first harvest. Dreaming about the portrait of the painted lady, and when he would again gaze on her, had motivated him through some of the coldest and darkest days of winter. As he watched the corn plants begin to grow now, he said aloud,
“I shall see my friend soon!” His voice thundered through the lands surrounding his with only the squirrels and deer frolicking through the countryside to hear. Jacques was the only man for miles around in this secluded pocket of land. At least that is what he thought, but as a bush rustled now and he raised his rifle toward it if he should need to fire in defense or to provide meat if it were a juicy piece of venison or hare, his breath drew in quickly. It was not an animal that had stepped from the foliage, but a man. He was dressed in animal skins and his hair was as black as the ravens in London. He stood in the clearing, his tanned sun glistening in the sun. Jacques's rifle remained trained on the man, but the man showed no sign of fear. Why should a man look so confident when standing unarmed before the threat of bullets? Unless— a chill descended over Jacques. Unless, he was not alone and others waited to emerge from the trees as he had. He took a step forward and Jacques's grip tightened.
The man gestured toward the rifle and moved his hand to one side to illustrate that Jacques should discard of the weapon. Jacques, who had never trained as a fighting man, had common sense enough not to throw aside his only hopes of survival should a war party suddenly descend on him. Perhaps, these tribes were in league with the Catholics and would not be satisfied until every Huguenot was butchered. The other man did not easily give up his request though and when Jacques would not relinquish control of his weapon, he changed tactics and threw aside his own spear so that Jacques would be clear of his intention. Jacques, still skeptical, waited to be certain it was not a trick and then he laid down his own rifle.
“Friend,” the man said, in shaky English.
Jacques's head cocked to the side in surprise.
“You speak English?” Jacques asked, himself now fluent in that which had once been foreign.
“Friend,” the man repeated. Jacques remembered that he had just declared aloud that he would have a friend, moments before the man appeared. Perhaps, he was only repeating what he had heard. If that were true, though, then it seemed very coincidental that he was acting in a manner synonymous with the word he was using.
“Friend,” Jacques said now.
As if some treaty had been signed the man stepped forward and shook his hand, obviously acquainted with the ways of the white men.
“I am Jacques,” he introduced himself.
“Jack, yes, friend,” he said, without offering his own name. Jacques was about to ask him for it but the man had already turned away, busying himself in the inspection of Jacques's crops. He crouched low to the ground and whispered something in an ancient language to the tiny sprouts.
Turning back to Jacques, he said,
“Good. Use fish.”
“Fish?” he said, as he bent to more closely see what the other man had.
“Fish helps grow,” he explained, picking up a handful of soil and showing with his hands how to mix the two together.
“Thank you,” Jacques said.
He nodded.
“It makes good. My fathers do this for many moons.”
“What is your name?” Jacques asked now, thinking it was only fair to know who had delivered such sage advice.
“Too hard for you. You say John for me.”
Jacques laughed and John's smile spread steadily as well. Though never asked or arranged, John visited Jacques and the corn daily after the first meeting. When John saw the silver and silks and Jacques told him it was the work of his fathers for many moons John wanted to set up trade. Jacques agreed that after the corn was complete, he would trade with John and his tribe. The day of the harvest brought an extended visit from John. The yellow kernels glowed more beautifully than any gold he had seen and the corn's silk felt more luxurious than any fabric he had dealt with. Jacques bent to retrieve the bag with the painting inside, when the two men had eaten the evening meal together. John watched expectantly for what Jacques would unveil.
“My mother gave me this.”
“Very beautiful,” John said, bending in for a closer look. Brightly colored beads, traded by the whites with the tribes since the last century, adorned his shirt. As he bent in to look, Jacques noticed the painting reflected in one of the beads. John jumped back, as if he had been stung by a bee.
“What is it?”
“It talks.”
“What did it say?” Jacques asked, sitting forward.
“I go now,” John said and stood to leave.
Jacques sat there with the painting before him, unsure of what had happened. He hadn't imagined it after all! The night on the boat the painting had spoken to him. But, what had it said to John? He had left abruptly and so must have received a more coherent message than that which Jacques received. He stared at the painted lady, but her lips were tightly sealed and she was unwilling to divulge any further secrets to him.
Jacques waited all the next day for John to arrive, but he did not come. The following day passed without any sign of him either. Perhaps he had never intended to come after the harvest, but Jacques felt that the painting must have something to do with it. Seven days passed without a visit from John. Having had a friend and fearing him lost now was more painful and lonely than being isolated in a foreign land. When the eighth day came, he was convinced that he would not see John again. Silently, though, he appeared in the clearing the way that he had on the first day of spring in those months before.
“John!” Jacques said, in delight.
“Jack,” he said, but looked serious as he continued, “I must go.”
“Where?”
“My people must go south to the place you call North Carolina.”
“Will you return?” He felt foolish for asking, but he felt he had to. John shook his head.
“Come and eat with me before you go,” Jacques offered. John consented and they sat together, as they had so many times before, for one last time. As John prepared to leave, Jacques glanced up at the painted lady reminded of his last painful parting. He noticed how once again the bead captured the reflection of the painting.
“I will remember you. Remember me,” a voice said and this time Jacques did not doubt its origin.