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CATHERINE AND NANCY were amongst those passengers pushed up against the railing of the Inverness, their eyes stung from the wind as they gazed with excitement at each and every sight the ship sailed past.
Catherine had never beheld such tall trees as those lining both sides of the river, among them, oak, walnut, chestnut, pine, and elm. On the forest floor, crimson, gold, blue, and purple wildflowers contrasted sharply with the lush, green foliage. Catherine could hardly wait to explore the woods for flowers and wild herbs, which she meant to dig up and plant in her own garden, she told Nancy.
“You might become Jamestown’s first lady physick,” Nancy replied grinning, her gray eyes also taking in the wonders spread before them.
“Several times I assisted my mother with birthings in our village,” Catherine added.
Their talk of healing herbs and plants brought to mind her conversation with Princess Pocahontas that fateful night in England. Although their time together had been brief, Catherine still ached over the great loss they’d all suffered by the Indian girl’s death. Catherine had no idea what fatal illness had so quickly claimed Pocahontas’s life, but due to her chills and possible fever, she suspected pneumonia, or perhaps even smallpox. If Pocahontas had lived and they’d made the crossing together, she was certain they’d now be fast friends. Her thoughts of the Indian princess were so strong, she imagined she could feel her gentle, loving spirit watching over them when, at long last, the two ships rounded a curve in the river and the fort of Jamestown came into view.
Exultant cheers and applause arose from those pressed against the loops of prickly hemp lining the ship’s railing, although no one felt the rope’s sting as the pain was overshadowed by joy and relief. From the quarterdeck, someone managed to shush the excited passengers in order to offer up a prayer of thanksgiving for their safe voyage.
Although not all of the passengers would go ashore, Catherine and Nancy fell in with a group of men and a few women who excitedly scrambled into the longboats to be rowed across the stretch of water still separating them from land. Those in town who had spotted the ships came running from the fort’s palisaded walls to stand close to the water’s edge, waving and shouting to the newcomers. Children jumped up and down as barking dogs ran in circles at their feet.
Catherine’s excitement reached new heights as she breathlessly scanned the sea of faces on shore. Would her father, her brother, and Noah all be there to welcome her? Or would they still be at work in their fields, not even aware she had come all the way from England to join them?
When the shallop drew nearer the pier . . . for indeed Jamestown now had its own pier . . . the two men nearest the front of the longboat clambered onto the sturdy wooden planks to wrap lengths of rope around one of the tall poles jutting up from the muddy water. At last Catherine, with Nancy trailing a few steps behind her, began to shakily walk the length of the pier toward the sandy shore.
Suddenly spotting her brother standing just outside the timbered walls of the fort, Catherine let out a cry. “Adam!” She broke into a run, but in her haste to reach him, stumbled over a craggy rock. She scrambled to right herself, then, in her haste to reach her brother, dropped the bundle she carried and, finally finding her land legs, ran the rest of the way towards him. “Adam!”
“Cat? Is that you?” A tall, swarthy young man with the same rich, auburn-colored hair as Catherine’s caught her up in his arms and swung her around and around. Setting her down, he held her at arm’s length. “I can hardly believe m’eyes! My little sister, an’ all grown up, I see!”
A plain-looking young woman with mousy brown hair and a somewhat weary smile stepped forward, and Adam introduced her to Catherine. “This is m’wife, Abigail.”
“Your wife? Oh, Adam, you’ve married!”
“Just over a year now,” he replied with obvious pride.
The two women embraced, but already Catherine’s glittering green eyes were searching the crowd for the one familiar face she so longed to see.
“Where is Noa . . .?”
And then she saw him.
He was looking right at her. “Noah!” she called, it not registering in her mind to question why he was not racing toward her.
She hiked up her long skirt and hastened to close the few yards that separated them. “Noah! It’s me, Catherine!”
Nearing him, their gazes locked. He was as handsome as ever, but . . ..
“Hello, Catherine.” The handsome man made no move to embrace her. Just then, a pretty apple-cheeked girl with long blonde curls stepped closer to his side. Glaring at Catherine, she wrapped both arms possessively through one of his.
When Catherine’s gaze dropped to the girl’s belly, swollen huge with child, her heart plummeted to her feet.
Then everything went black.
* * * *
“PUT HER IN FATHER’S old room.”
“Adam, fetch a trencher of water.”
“You may put your things over there, Miss Mills.”
“Nancy, my name be Nancy.”
“Very well. How long has it been since she’s eaten, Nancy?”
“There was victuals this mornin’, sir, but rations been scant of late. We’ve ’ad nothin’ t’eat since mornin’.”
“That was hours ago! She’s exhausted, poor thing.”
“The sea voyage was simply too arduous for her.”
“She feels feverish.”
And a bit later someone said, “I think she may be coming ’round.”
But she wasn’t coming around. How could she? Her soul felt numb, as if it had suffered a shock too horrible to bear. Her head throbbed with every beat of her heart. Her entire body trembled when she attempted to stand. How could she possibly go on living?
Sometime later, without speaking, Catherine let Adam’s wife Abigail slide an arm beneath her shoulders and prop her up against a pillow to spoon some broth into her mouth. Later, Nancy helped her out of bed to use the chamber pot, but once back in bed, her head sank into the feather pillow and her eyes squeezed shut.
The truth was too dreadful to bear. Noah had married! Why? How could he have married when he knew she was coming? They were to be wed. She was the one meant to carry his child, not some girl he barely knew and who could not possibly love him as she did. Why? Why?
As she lay in the darkness that night, comforted only by the soothing sound of Nancy’s even breathing from the pallet Abigail had prepared for her on the floor, Catherine could no longer hold back her tears. They streamed down her cheeks, soaking into the pillow beneath her head. Would the pain ever go away? If only she could rip out her heart, she might be able to bear this torment. As it was, she could not imagine what on God’s green earth she would do now? She couldn’t go back to England. She could never go back there. But . . . she also could not stay here. Dear Lord, what was to become of her now? When no answers came, she sank deeper and deeper into a seemingly bottomless pit of gloom and despair.
* * * *
EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, Catherine’s fitful slumber was disturbed by the sound of voices from another room in the house. From the muffled words that drifted toward her, she gleaned that the Jamestown settlers had learned that the Princess Pocahontas was dead. When it became known that Adam Parke’s kinswoman had been friends with the Rolfes, Deputy-Governor Yeardley had sent a delegation to the Parke home to learn what they could from Mistress Fielding. Catherine crept to the door of her chamber and peeked through a crack to look and listen.
“I was unaware my sister was acquainted with the Rolfes,” Adam told the men, standing solemnly inside the doorway of the small house. He turned to Nancy. “Perhaps Miss Mills can enlighten us.”
Fully awake now, Catherine listened intently for Nancy’s answer.
“I be happy to tell you what I know, sir. Miss Fielding met Mr. and Mistress Rolfe the night afore we set sail. They engaged ’er to tutor their boy.”
“Ah . . . so, your sister is a Dame Teacher, is she?” one of the men asked.
“Um . . . yes. Yes, she is,” Adam replied, not sounding terribly certain, but his answer was accepted. “A very fine one, I’m sure.”
Nancy spoke up again. “We was to reside with the Rolfes when we arrived here, sir.”
“May we speak with your sister?” the second man asked.
“She is too ill to receive visitors,” Abigail said.
“Many of the women on board ship was too ill to come ashore, sir,” Nancy added. “Miss Fielding should ’ave rested a bit afore she left her sickbed.”
“She suffers from ship fever, does she?”
“Yes, sir. We ate lemons in the beginnin’ but after a spell, they run out. All the food was near spoilt then. There wasn’t much of anythin’ left to eat.”
Apparently satisfied with what little they’d learned, the delegation expressed their well wishes for Mistress Fielding’s recovery and departed.
A puzzled look on his face, Adam turned to Nancy. “I am most curious why you refer to Catherine as ‘Miss Fielding’ when that is clearly not her name. And the delegation referred to her as ‘Mistress’ Fielding. Has my sister married and is now a widow?”
“Umm . . . indeed, sir, that be the way of it. She wish now to make a fresh start in the New World,” Nancy fabricated.
Catherine breathed a sigh of relief and crept back to bed. She could not have provided better answers to their questions than Nancy did. And she was most grateful to have been spared the trying ordeal.
*****
DURING THE SECOND MORNING Catherine lay abed, she was aware that Nancy rose early to help Abigail prepare the morning meal. It surprised her that breakfast alone took close on two hours to prepare. Listening to the bustle coming from the other room, she surmised that her brother and his wife had a servant, who perhaps slept in an outbuilding, or in the loft. She assumed the house contained a loft, for she’d heard noises: creaking floorboards, a cough in the night, footsteps ascending and descending stairs somewhere. She’d heard Abigail address the fellow as “boy” or “lad” as she sent him for water, to milk the goat, feed the chickens, or bring in what eggs he could find.
That morning Catherine was alert enough to cast a curious gaze about the room where she laid. It was quite small, furnished with only the one bed, a roughly made washstand, and a simple, two-drawer chest. Overall it was not too terribly different from the tiny garret room where she’d lived in London. The ceiling was higher here but there was no real floor, just hard-packed earth covered by a sprinkling of rather soiled-looking straw. On the wall opposite the bed was a single window, covered with a wooden panel that looked as if it might slide back and forth. Everything she saw seemed bare and sparse, not at all what she’d expected.
But then, nothing thus far in the New World had been as she’d expected.
Later that day, when sleep eluded her and curiosity overcame her, she dragged herself to her feet and padded barefoot across the room. Noiselessly, she slid the wooden window covering aside and was surprised to find no glass in the window. Peering out, she saw that Adam’s house stood some distance away from the one next to it. Craning her neck from the opening, she could see a dusty path in front of the row of houses, and beyond that, a wide grassy area dotted with tall trees. On the other side of the greensward lay another dusty path fronting a row of identical-looking huts, all crudely constructed of rough-hewn timbers, the spaces between smeared with what appeared to be a hardened mixture of sand or clay. All the roofs were thatched, much like their old farmhouse in England. Most were high-pitched, with a single window near the top that bespoke a loft. Most had chimneys. Catherine watched thin curls of smoke drift lazily upward, then disappear into the thick treetops that sheltered the houses like canopies.
The bit of activity going on outdoors mildly interested her. Men called to one another as they crisscrossed the greensward, asking after the progress in one another’s fields or just hailing a greeting. Some carried tools; one led a goat somewhere. She saw only a few womenfolk scurrying here and there, tending to their work without looking up or bothering to speak to the men, or even to each other.
Straining to see further up the wide grassy area that separated the two rows of huts, an odd-looking structure caught her eye. Dome-shaped, it was made of large, rounded stones. She watched two women carrying long-handled griddles of something they then slid into an opening on one side of the domed structure. A thin ribbon of smoke curled upward from the top, leading Catherine to surmise the odd building to be some sort of oven. Most women left their griddles stuck inside the opening before they hurried away.
The busy women brought to mind what Pocahontas had said: that women here worked from sunup to sunset. A sigh escaped Catherine. Apparently it was true. She had hardly seen either Abigail or Nancy that day, but she’d heard their voices coming from the other room as they told one another about a task just completed and another each was about to begin.
Catherine turned and headed back to the relative comfort of her bed. The primitiveness of the colonists’ hovels surprised her. Those she’d seen from the window were cruder than the huts of the poorest peasants in England. She’d had no idea how her father and brother lived, what sort of home they had, or what their lives were truly like. A sob caught in her throat. How were she and Nancy to get on here . . . alone?
With the dream she’d clung to these many years now shattered and gone, she wondered if the emptiness inside her, the gaping hole in her heart, could ever be filled. Turning her back against the window, she closed her eyes to shut out the sights and sounds of this strange new world.
Sometime later, when the smell of the evening meal caused her empty stomach to growl, Catherine again pulled herself to her feet. She couldn’t lie abed forever. Moving to where her dusty valise sat in a corner on the earthen floor, she pulled out a fresh gown and put it and her boots on. Because she’d had little to eat the past two days, weakness nearly overtook her as she headed toward the doorway that separated the tiny bedchamber from the room beyond.
Abigail glanced up when Catherine entered the common room. “Welcome, sister!” She smiled as she set a platter of sizzling roasted pork onto the planked wooden table at the far end of the room. “Come to join us for dinner, have ye?”
A wan smile lifted the corners of Catherine’s mouth as she slowly headed toward the table. This room was a good deal larger than her bedchamber. A fireplace, large enough for one to actually walk into, took up one entire wall. A long-barreled fowling piece hung on the stone wall above the fireplace. That it was crossed by her father’s sword made her wonder about him again. She’d seen no sign of her father since she arrived. Was he . . .?
On the far side of the hearth she saw a crudely constructed ladder, which she assumed led to the loft. In a helter-skelter fashion, various cooking and cleaning implements leaned against the wall. Pegs holding an assortment of clothing littered all the walls of the room. The one small window here was located next to the door; it now stood ajar on wooden hinges.
“Where is Nancy?” Catherine asked, reaching the table, which consisted of two wide rough planks of wood supported by a pair of sawed-off tree trunks. A backless bench, supported by smaller tree blocks, fronted the table. Another gouged-out section of tree trunk had been turned into a serviceable chair that sat at one end of the planked-board table. A second backless bench skirted the other side.
“She’ll be along,” Abigail replied gaily. “She went to fetch my flatbread from the oven. I’ve prepared a feast, as you can see. Adam comes home from the field fair starvin’ most days.”
She motioned for Catherine to slide onto one of the benches, and soon after she’d settled herself, Adam, Nancy, and the servant boy all streamed into the house. The boy, who looked to be about twelve with a disheveled thatch of straw-colored hair, slid onto the bench right next to Catherine, which surprised her, as she was not accustomed to having stable boys dine with the family! It did not seem odd for Nancy to eat with them, of course, but Catherine had long ago ceased to think of her as a servant.
Nancy and Adam both expressed their pleasure at seeing her up and about, but cautioned her not to overexert herself. When the meal had concluded, which Catherine admitted was surprisingly tasty, Nancy jumped up to help Abigail clear the soiled trenchers while Adam turned to Catherine.
“Do you feel steady enough to walk a bit, sis?”
“I feel quite strong now.” She smiled pleasantly. “The dinner was delicious, Abigail. I admit I was near famished. Do you need me to help wash up?”
“You go along with Adam. Nancy and I can manage. Boy, we be needing a bucket of freshwater; scoot now, afore it gets dark.”
Adam turned a concerned look on Catherine. “Ye might need a shawl. Evenings are cool here. We’ll not walk far. Wouldn’t want you to catch a chill.”
Nancy had already hurried to fetch Catherine’s wrap, and helped to settle it about her shoulders before brother and sister set out for their walk.
Outdoors the sun had already dipped lower in the sky, the golden orb now completely obscured by the thick cover of tree leaves. The evening air felt crisp and the cool breeze promised a chilly night ahead, but to Catherine the fresh air smelled especially good. Despite the raw emotions still churning within her, the New World seemed quite peaceful now.
“A walk will do me good,” she told Adam.
“Since you were . . . unconscious when we brought you here, I thought you’d like to see something of this end of Jamestown.”
Before they reached the dusty path in front of the house, she glanced over one shoulder and noted that Adam’s hut sat at the far end of the long street. From the window on the opposite side, where she’d looked out earlier, she’d been unable to see that the dense forest lay directly to the other side of the house.
“You’re quite close to the woods,” she remarked, falling into step beside him as they turned onto the dusty road.
“When Pa and I first came, there were no other houses this far out. Since then, more and more settlers have come. This end of town is completely built up now.” Glancing at her feet, he grinned. “I’m glad to see you brought sensible shoes.”
“Yes.” She smiled. “Nancy and I both managed to get ourselves a pair of boots.”
“Nancy seems a good sort. Was she indeed your maidservant in London?”
“The Montcrief household was full of servants. Nancy was one of many.”
“I wonder that you would leave such opulence for . . . this.” His tone sounded a trifle wistful.
Catherine bit her lip to keep from blurting out the real reason she had come and the immense disappointment over what she’d found here. “Tell me about Father. Neither you nor Abigail has mentioned him.”
“Pa died last winter. Dysentery. He passed only a few days after the onset.”
A wrenching sob caught in Catherine’s throat. She had guessed her father was gone but hadn’t wanted to believe it. Her chin began to tremble as tears of grief welled in her eyes. Her precious dream with Noah dead and gone, now here was yet one more death to mourn.
“There was no one here to bleed him,” Adam went on. “In the end he was too weak to move, and couldn’t speak.”
“I brought our grandmother’s pestle and mortar,” Catherine murmured, sniffing back tears.
“Pa worked hard. I watched him become an old man before my eyes. Life is not easy here, Cat.”
“I’m beginning to see that.”
Although darkness was nigh upon them, the few womenfolk Catherine saw were still toiling over their chores. One stood outdoors dousing wooden spoons and trenchers in a bucket of cloudy water. Another was on her knees attempting to break up clods of dirt at the side of her hut in preparation to plant a garden. A stoop-shouldered woman emerging from a ramshackle hut began to toss scraps over a rickety fence to a pair of grunting pigs. They came upon a white-capped girl of no more than ten or eleven sitting astride a stool, milking a goat. When Catherine and Adam passed by, the startled goat spun toward them. One of its legs kicked the bucket over. Luckily the girl caught it before all the milk spilled onto the ground.
“A number of settlers brought livestock with them on the ship,” Catherine said, though she didn’t think Adam heard her over the sounds of the milkmaid scolding the goat.
“Abby and I own a horse,” he said proudly.
“Do you?” Her interest was mildly aroused. “Where do you keep it?”
“In the lean-to behind the house. I ride back and forth to the plantation every day. I’m a real Virginia planter now. I own two hundred fifty acres of rich Virginia soil, and this year I’ve planted nearly four acres with tobacco.”
“Only four? Why have you not planted more? I understand tobacco leaves are quite lucrative.”
Adam laughed. “Virginia is a wilderness, sis. I’ve only managed to clear four acres. If a man did nothing else, it could take as long as a year to clear a single acre.”
“How did you gain so much land?”
“We early settlers, those of us who settled at our own expense, were given fifty acres rent-free. When Pa died, I inherited his land and I’ve since paid the passage for two other men to help me work it. Under the New Headright System, for each indentured contract I buy, I get another fifty acres.”
“That’s wonderful, Adam.” She was genuinely pleased for him. “You must be considered quite wealthy.” She ached to ask how Noah fared. Although her dream of sharing in his success in the New World was now shattered and gone, she longed to know how he was getting on. Yet she feared if she were to speak openly of him, she’d burst into tears right here on the street.
“Tell me about Mother,” Adam said. “You’re the image of her now.” He draped an arm about Catherine’s shoulders and gave her a quick squeeze. “I’ve missed you, Cat.”
She told him about their mother’s death and being sent to London to live with their distant kin, Lord and Lady Montcrief, and a bit about her privileged life there.
“Doesn’t sound as if you had it too bad off in London.”
“I missed Mama terribly. And you and Papa and . . . Noah,” she added in a whisper. “I only just received Papa’s letter. I suspect now it was written some time ago.”
“I don’t recall when Pa wrote it. Can sometimes take years for a letter to reach its destination.”
At the end of the street, they walked around the curve at the top and headed back down the opposite side.
Catherine still ached to know more about Noah. She knew she wouldn’t rest until she knew why he hadn’t waited for her, why he’d married another. Even if a tear did trickle down her cheek now, Adam wouldn’t see it in the dusky light.
She inhaled a breath of courage. “Why didn’t Noah wait for me, Adam? Why did he marry when he knew I was coming?”
“Well, it appears you didn’t wait for him either, Mistress Fielding!”
She stared up at him, her eyes wide. “But I . . . I . . .” His allusion to her having married confused her, until she remembered what Nancy had said that morning.
“Who did you marry, and when?” he demanded.
“It was an arranged union,” she blurted out, borrowing from the truth of what would have transpired had she stayed in England. “More advantageous to Lord Montcrief than to me.”
“Ah. With your husband’s surname the same as our grandmother’s, I assume he, too, was a kinsman?”
“Yes,” she lied, her green eyes shuttered. She hated forwarding the deception she’d set in motion when she boarded the ship, but if the truth came out, she feared it was still possible for Lord Montcrief to track her down and demand she return to England. Especially now; now that she was not to be married here. “I expected Noah would wait for me,” she murmured sadly.
“You wouldn’t have wanted to marry him, Cat.”
“But, I love him!” she cried. “I’ve always loved him. And he loves me.”
Adam’s tone hardened. “Noah’s not the same man you knew in England. It takes a lot of hard toil to work this land. Not every man wants to do his share.”
Nothing he said against Noah could change her mind about him. Of course hard work changed a man! Even Adam had changed. Despite what her brother said, she loved Noah as fiercely now as she ever had.
“I’ll understand if you want to return to England.”
“I cannot go back now,” she said. “I’d pinned all my hopes on being with Noah. I thought once we were wed and had our own family, that, oh, Adam, I feel so . . . so. . . .” Another sob escaped her.
Drawing her into his arms, Adam murmured soothing words into the tangled mass of her hair. When her sobs subsided, they began again to walk.
“You and Nancy will get on very well here.”
“But how? We cannot clear a field or . . . plant tobacco.”
“No.” He chuckled. “But Jamestown is full of young men in want of good wives.”
“Noah and I should have wed before you left England.”
“You were but a child then.”
“And now it appears he has married a child. The girl can’t be more than fifteen.” Her tone hardened. “A child about to become mother to a child.”
Adam said nothing further on the charged subject.
Catherine was also ready to abandon it. “You have grown thin, Adam.”
“Everyone is thin here.”
“Noah’s wife is not thin.”
He turned a surprised look on her. “I don’t recall you having such a sharp tongue, Catherine.”
“I have held my tongue for the past six years. Perhaps it is time I began to say what is on my mind.”
They came upon a cluster of men talking together on the greensward. The light cast by the oil lantern one carried flickered across their faces. Adam exchanged a few words with the men, then introduced Catherine, telling them she was his sister just arrived from England.
She forced a small smile to her lips before they moved on.
“You just met a number of freemen. It will not be long before you and Nancy find husbands. Everything will be fine, you’ll see.”
He sounded so sure and confident, she almost believed him.
But not quite. How could she possibly carry on as if nothing had happened? How could she marry another man when her heart lay broken in a million pieces and she was still deeply in love with the man who had broken it?