Free 1609, Winter of the Dead: A Novel of the Founding of Jamestown by Elizabeth Massie

hardtack from the ships. Gentlemen, who had occupied themselves with ordering the laborers about and complaining about everything from the smell of their tents to the lack of gold lying about on the top of the ground, sat by their fires and adjusted their collars and dabbed their sweaty foreheads with their handkerchiefs. The council president, Captain Wingfield, sat with Gabriel Archer, John Ratcliffe, and several of the gentlemen. Wingfield seemed to think gentlemen were right in keeping their hands clean. He seemed as lazy as the worst of them.
    I should not want to be a man such as Wingfield, Nat thought. He is even worse than the blubbering Edward Brookes. Brookes was not a very bright man, and in that is his excuse. But Wingfield is clearly shrewd. Yet look at him, dallying around as if the rest of us were servants.
    When no one was watching, Nat took a helmet, musket, and powder horn from the store tent and sneaked into the woods by the clearing. He knew it was dangerous and that the council would not approve, but he had to get away for a little while. Until Smith invited him on an expedition, he could at least check out the woods near the settlement.
    He walked through the pines, as thick and as close together as old women telling each other secrets. He held the musket shoulder height. The underbrush was dense. Thorns grabbed his ankles, biting through the cotton stockings and into his flesh. Briars wrapped his sleeves and ripped them. But he kept on walking. He followed a winding stream a short ways, then climbed a boulder, slick with moss. He watched carefully, remembering the details of the landscape. When he had the chance, he would draw a map and keep it with his journal pages. This way he could return when the chance arose and find his riches alone.
    The shadows in the woods were deep. Sunlight was swallowed up in the throats of the trees. Birds screamed overhead, mocking the young Englishman as he stumbled ahead. A vine wrapped around his bad foot and with a grunt he fell on his face, the musket flying from his grasp. His head struck a log, making a gash in his cheek and throwing stars in his field of vision.
    â€œOw,” Nat moaned, rolling over onto his back and touching his face. Above him was the tangle of branches. Beneath him, the ground was slick and damp with mosses and lichens. Cautiously he rolled to his side.
    â€œI’m doing poorly as an explorer,” Nat sputtered, then took a long, deep breath. “Good thing Smith can’t see me now. Brawling and tripping! Pitiful! Enough, now. Act as an explorer and you will be an explorer.”
    He looked straight ahead.
    Staring at him from the brush was a pair of eyes.
    Screaming, Nat sat bolt upright. His hands went out before him to protect himself. And then something came down firmly on his shoulder.
    He screamed again.
    A voice said, “What is the matter with you, Nat?”
    Nat’s head snapped around. Jehu Robinson stood there, one hand on Nat’s shoulder, the other on the hilt of his sword.
    â€œI saw eyes!” Nat said, panting. “There, look! Savages staring at me, ready to cut me to pieces!”
    Nat and Jehu looked into the brush.
    A strange animal, short, squatty, and fat, winked at them with a wet, confused gaze. The animal seemed to be wearing a black mask and its tail was encircled with rings. Its nose twitched, and it lumbered off beneath the low branches of a pine tree and out of sight.
    â€œSavages?” asked Jehu. He stood up and chuckled. “If that is the savage we expect to find near James Towne, then I would fear very little for our safety!”
    Nat put his hand to his forehead. His legs hurt, his arm ached, his bad foot throbbed, and his face burned. And now embarrassment was heaped on top of it all. I look like a fool!
    â€œCan you walk, Nat?”
    Nat nodded. He wouldn’t make things worse by letting on how bad he felt.
    â€œGood, then. Come back with me to the site. John Smith