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STUNNED, CATHERINE could only stare wide-eyed at the man. What could possibly have happened? True, the princess had not felt well the previous evening, but she had certainly not been at death’s door! The news was so shocking as to be disbelieved. Catherine and Nancy could only blink with alarm at one another. Tears streamed down the faces of the Indian women, who had all slept soundly beside the two English girls. When the women began to keen and wail and chant prayers in their native tongue, Nancy flung a bewildered look at Catherine, who was now dabbing at the tears in her eyes as she tried to digest the horrible news.
“Perhaps we should go up on deck, miss,” Nancy said, her tone fearful. “If the ship don’t sail today, we may very well have to . . . well, I don’t know what, miss.”
Catherine could not speak. Nancy was right. If the ships didn’t sail today, which was highly likely given the circumstances, she and Nancy would have no choice but to return to the Montcrief household and face the consequences of their respective misdeeds. Her heart sank as she realized a fate far worse than punishment hung over her head.
Still clothed as they had been the night before, both girls scrambled to their feet. They’d neither one slept well; both had tossed and turned in a futile attempt to get comfortable on the hard wooden floor. The cramped cabin was cold and drafty, heated only by the bodies and breath of the dozen or so women who’d slept beside them, each wrapped tightly in a blanket of security that had now been cruelly snatched from them.
Nancy, with Catherine close on her heels, led the way through the ship’s narrow passages and up a steep flight of steps to the main deck. Blinking into the daylight when their heads emerged from the hold, the girls joined the horde of humanity moving thither and yon on the upper deck, made somewhat slippery as a fine mist seeped through the thick morning fog swirling overhead. Everything felt wet and soggy to Catherine, as if the entire world wept over the death of a beloved daughter. She pulled her heavy cloak tighter about her trembling body. Above them, the raw east wind whipped and snapped through the sails, the motion causing the heavy hulk to teeter this way and that in the choppy water.
A cacophony of noises assaulted them as they made their way to nowhere in particular. They passed several crewmen rolling heavy hogsheads, the large barrels noisily crashing into one another as the men worked to guide them across the listing deck. Several hastily constructed pens, erected right there on deck, held an assortment of farm animals. Cows mooed their displeasure as they, too, sought purchase on the uneven surface, the roiling motion causing their heavy bodies to slam against one another. Goats bleated annoyance. The squeal of frightened pigs contrasted with the raucous crow of roosters squeezed into rickety crates.
As the girls neared the gangplank, dozens of men, women and children clambered onto the ship, all talking loudly and excitedly, each carrying as many bags and bundles as they could manage. Above their chatter, the crew shouted orders, telling the new arrivals where to deposit their belongings and where the various parts of the ship were located. Soon, the men began to turn people back and send them to board the third ship anchored in the harbor. From their cries, Catherine determined the ship they’d boarded the night before was the Inverness.
Huddled together by the ship’s railing, Catherine and Nancy watched the chaotic scene. Suddenly from out of the mayhem, a sturdy fellow, whose garb told them he was a ship’s officer, headed straight toward them.
“Ye be Miss Fielding?” The man addressed Catherine. “With the Rolfe party?”
Unable to find her voice, she nodded tightly.
Beside her, Nancy piped up, “An’ I be her maid, Miss Nancy Mills.”
Catherine’s head jerked around. Until now she hadn’t realized Nancy had a surname, let alone known what it was.
“Follow me to the roundhouse, miss.”
He set off, wending his way through the crowd though not leaving the ship. Icy fingers of fear raced up Catherine’s spine as she hurried to keep pace. Had the Montcriefs already discovered them missing and this “roundhouse” was where they would be detained until Lord Montcrief came for them? Perhaps he was already here, spitting mad. The death of Pocahontas was already having far-reaching effects. It obviously meant the death of Catherine’s dream for a new life. John Rolfe would certainly not be leaving England today, so there was no need for her to make the journey to the New World to tutor their boy. The plain truth was she and Nancy were to be put off the ship.
The officer led them to a spacious cabin secreted high above the quarterdeck. Once they’d stepped inside, Catherine was surprised to find not an incensed Lord Montcrief, but a dozen or so men gathered around a large oaken table, breaking their fast!
“Miss Fielding an’ her maid, Capt’n.”
Catching sight of the young ladies, the captain and several of the men leapt to their feet.
“Be seated, gentl’men,” the captain said. A tattered napkin tucked in his collar, he stepped behind the men to approach the girls.
“Capt’n Phillips, at yer service, Miss Fielding.”
Catherine nodded nervously.
The captain dismissed the midshipman and motioned for the girls to follow him into a small anteroom, which contained a massive desk, two chairs and various and sundry nautical devices. The captain shut the door and turned to face the girls, their eyes round with fright.
“We was all deeply saddened by the news of Mrs. Rolfe’s death, Miss Fielding. Mr. Rolfe tol’ me to look after you and . . . ah . . . yer maid. Actually . . .” he directed a look at Nancy, “Mr. Rolfe dinna’ mention ye was travelin’ with a maid, but, I ’spect, in his grief, it were a mere oversight.”
“Mmmm.” A squeak of alarm escaped Catherine. She was so distraught at the moment that the matter of explaining Nancy’s presence was far and away beyond her capability.
“In any event,” Captain Phillips went on, “we be settin’ sail today as planned, unless ye’ve decided not to travel with us.” He paused, his eyes a question as he looked at Catherine.
“N-no, sir. Our plans have not changed, sir.”
“Very well, then.”
The captain told Catherine that while aboard ship she would take her meals with the other gentlewomen, whilst Nancy would be obliged to dine . . . ah . . . elsewhere. Relief flooded Catherine, and she relaxed a mite.
The captain led them back into the dining chamber, which in their absence, had thinned out somewhat . . . although, Catherine noted, there was still plenty of delicious-smelling food on the table! A growl of hunger escaped her midsection.
“Newell,” the captain barked to one of the men, “show Miss Fielding and her maid to their cabin and ’ave some victuals brought ’round.”
* * * *
“GOR-R!” EXCLAIMED NANCY, when they were left alone in a small, neatly furnished cabin tucked in a far corner of the quarterdeck. “I daresay we be right lucky, miss! I feared we was being brought up on charges, and all along we was becoming ‘Important Persons.’ At least, you was, miss!” The relief in her tone echoed that which Catherine felt.
They stood grinning at one another, and when a large wooden tray loaded with food, coddled eggs, thick slices of bacon, warm sourdough bread and mugs of steaming black coffee, was delivered to them, they dug in and ate like starved prisoners.
The high easterly wind that day was more than favorable, and in no time at all, two of the three filled-to-capacity barks put out to sea for the New World. The voyage to Virginia was estimated to take from sixty to eighty days. Near dockside, the George lingered behind. Word was there would be a funeral for the Princess Pocahontas at nearby Gravesend. Catherine realized how lucky she was to have been assigned to the Inverness.
Though the girls’ snug little cabin featured a feather mattress atop a rope bed hanging from the wall, the room was just as cold and drafty as every other nook and cranny on the ship.
After the girls dressed for the day, each headed in different directions to break their fast. Initially, Catherine enjoyed the company of the other women she dined with. From their conversation, it was evident they all possessed some degree of education, as well as a passing knowledge of the social graces. However, Catherine’s remark that her father and brother already had a thriving plantation in Jamestown and that she was to be married as soon as she arrived elicited cool replies.
“How nice for you, Miss Fielding, to already have a home awaiting you in the New World,” said one, whose husband planned to establish an iron-ore company in the Virginia colony.
“The rest of us,” said another, “will be obliged to remain aboard ship until our men folk can build a house, a task which can take weeks.”
“Oh, my,” Catherine murmured, “I had no idea.”
That the other women began to regard her in a less-than-agreeable manner did not lessen Catherine’s excitement a whit. Each and every day, she offered up a prayer of thanksgiving that, at long last, she was, indeed, on her way to her father and brother and . . . most of all, to Noah. She imagined how happy they would be, once wed and settled in their own home. She’d make the house pretty for him, for she loved beautiful things. In due time they’d have a child, with more babes to follow. They’d be a happy, loving family. Surely the good Lord had at last looked down and smiled upon her. Every dream in her heart was coming true.
Though conditions on board ship worsened as the voyage progressed, Catherine clung tenaciously to her dream to see her through what were surely the worst of times.
Eventually the supply of foodstuffs on board ship began to dwindle; the butter, cheese and fish grew rancid, cabbages, turnips, and onions wilted and spoiled. The only thing consistently fresh was the milk that came straight from the cows and goats, but it was generally given only to children and those few men who requested it. However, that too dwindled when the rations set aside to feed the livestock began to give out. Meals soon became no more than a simple pease porridge, or boiled mush served in wooden trenchers along with cold hardtack and brackish water, which grew to taste less and less like water and more and more like . . . Catherine became hard-pressed to say.
For Nancy and the rest of the common folk, meals were served anywhere one could find to sit or stand on deck. The women cooked over open “hearths” which consisted of bricks piled up beneath a tripod from which an iron kettle hung suspended over the flames. In rainy weather, when cooking on the open deck was impossible, lower-deck passengers were served cold victuals near a hatchway that opened onto the hold.
In inclement weather, Catherine chose to leave her private cabin only for meals. The filth and slime that accumulated on deck from the livestock made strolling there unpleasant, even hazardous. A sudden lurch of the ship and one could find oneself slipping and sliding in a mish-mash of foul-smelling dung and other murk and mire. The malodor soon permeated the entire ship and reminded Catherine of Pocahontas’s comment about white man’s ships being dirty. Dirty was putting it mildly, she thought. The ever-present stench from overflowing slop buckets and unwashed bodies soon became overpowering.
At times following a hard rain, the crew made an attempt to swab the deck, but all that effort really netted was to move the filth from one end of the ship to the other. Sewage and masses of dirty rainwater managed to filter through the rotting floorboards of the deck and finally end up in the bilge from which an intolerable and sickening odor emanated.
According to Nancy, who daily associated with the common folk at mealtime, the men and women, whose sleeping quarters were similar to one another’s but located in separate parts of the ship, bunked two and in some cases, three and four to a narrow wooden trough. Both girls felt fortunate they’d been spared that inconvenience and insult to their privacy.
They were not spared all insults, however, as it wasn’t long before the lice, fleas, bedbugs, mice, and rats that plagued both passengers and crew, some who slept in elevated hammocks on deck in an attempt to avoid the vermin, soon infested their secluded cabin. Both girls constantly scratched at red whelps all over their bodies.
“I’m beginning to see why Pocahontas insisted on bathing every day,” Catherine remarked irritably as she strained to scratch a spot in the middle of her back.
“I don’t believe that would help,” Nancy said peevishly as she dug at a whelp on her arm.
“If only we had some cottonweed or fleabane.”
“You know about simples and cures, miss?” Nancy asked with interest.
“A bit.” Catherine nodded. “My mother and grandmother taught me how to make salves and potions from herbs and flowers.”
“Perhaps your cures could have saved those souls already lost on our voyage.” Lung ailments and ship fever had claimed several lives, their bodies slipped overboard into a watery grave. “At least we’ve not come down with anything.”
“Thanks to you,” Catherine replied, referring to the parcel of lemons Nancy had snatched at the last minute the night they fled London.
“If m’brothers hadn’t been sailors, I wouldn’t a’knowed that sucking lemons would keep ship fever at bay. Some men, women, too, got no teeth left. Their mouths and tongues so swelled up, their teeth all fell out!”
Catherine blanched.
“Course if I’d been a-caught stealing lemons from the Montcrief’s, we’d a’both been hanged.”
“Or transported,” Catherine said on a laugh. “Which means we’d have ended up on our way to the New World anyhow.”
Due to a lack of anything better to do, she and Nancy whiled away many long afternoons in relative comfort in their private cabin exchanging plans for their future, as well as telling stories from their respective pasts.
Catherine learned that Nancy Mills’ three brothers were all sailors, and both her sisters had married fishermen who lived in villages dotting the southwesterly coast of England. The day the ship had sailed past that part of England, Nancy spent nearly that whole day up on deck, her gray eyes scanning the shoreline, no doubt thinking about the family she would likely never see again.
From Nancy, Catherine learned there were eighty passengers on board ship, most new settlers bound for Virginia and the promise of new lives. A number of convicts were also aboard, some released from debtors’ prison, their only crime being an inability to pay their debts.
One night as the girls lay in bed quietly talking before they drifted off to sleep, Nancy asked Catherine about her particular status once they reached Virginia. “Seeing as how you done paid my passage, am I to become yer servant, indentured to you and Mr. Noah?”
Catherine considered. She had, indeed, given Captain Phillips her precious voucher for Nancy’s passage and watched him add the name “Nancy Mills” to the ship’s log. Though the girls had lived side-by-side on the third floor of the Montcrief town home for as long as Catherine could remember, they’d never become acquainted. Now, she’d all but ceased to think of Nancy as a maidservant.
“No,” she finally said. “That I took care of your passage shall be our secret. We shall begin our lives in the New World on an equal footing.”
“But, what if I choose to hire on as yer housekeeper, or maid of all work?”
“I expect that would suit. Noah shouldn’t object to my having a maid.” She remembered Pocahontas saying that in the New World, a woman worked from sunup to sunset. “I shall surely require help.”
“Then it be settled,” Nancy concluded. “I shall be in the employ of Mistress Noah.”
Catherine chuckled. “Mistress Colton.”
She recalled how fervently Noah had wished them to wed before the men left for the New World. Though she was just a child of twelve then, he’d held her in his arms and told her how much he cared for her and how happy they’d one day be. Those fond memories and others from their shared childhood had sustained her throughout the years of heartache and loneliness she’d endured in London. And they kept her going now.
After a record sixty-eight days at sea, the two ships at last sailed into Chesapeake Bay. The day was bright and sunny, the sky overhead a clear, cornflower blue. Throughout the long journey, they’d never once set eyes on the George, the third ship in the fleet. Nor was it known whether or not the flagship had even left England.
Following the first cry of “Land ahoy!” the excitement on board ship was palpable. Nearly every last passenger, except the prisoners chained down in the hold, scrambled to get up on the main deck. Jockeying with one another for the best position at the crowded railing, all eyes strained to catch a glimpse of the land they would all soon call home.
Despite the horrendous conditions they’d endured, the terrible food, and several frightening storms, they’d never once been thrown off course. Although a few passengers aboard the Inverness and quite possibly the second ship were still too ill to walk under their own power, they were all grateful to have made it to the New World alive.
Numerous soundings were taken as the two ships, only yards away from one another, drifted noiselessly into the bay; their progress slow as there was little to no wind that day. From the shore the tall ships must have looked like brightly painted ornaments silently perched on the shimmering flat surface of the sea.
That next morning, a strong wind pushed them toward the fort of Jamestown, the ship’s hull creaking and straining as they sliced through the blue-green water toward the James River, one of several waterways that jutted off the bay.
At last, thought Catherine, they had reached their destination.