The Captive Princess Read online

  “Did you bring weapons?”

  This time neither man smiled, and neither seemed to be enjoying the process.

  “If you didn’t bring weapons, you can leave. I have no corn for you.” Powhatan folded his arms across his chest.

  John Smith bent to pick up the chickens and put them back into the sack.

  “No. Leave the chickens.”

  John Smith dropped them into the sack. “I’ll be back tomorrow.”

  The storm continued to blow. As soon as darkness fell, Pocahontas wrapped her furs around her and went out to find the lodge near the sandbar. As she knocked on the door, it opened and she faced John Smith.

  “Pocahontas. I am so glad to see you.” He made a gesture to invite her in.

  “No. Listen carefully. My father will have men bring you food tonight. As soon as you put your weapons down to eat, they plan to kill all of you.”

  “But why?”

  “There’s no time to talk. I must leave.” Pocahontas knew that if her father caught her, it wouldn’t matter that she was his favorite daughter. She’d be killed.

  “Wait.” John Smith went inside and came out with handfuls of beads. “Let me give you something to say thanks.”

  “Beads.” She started crying. “You think I did this for beads? What would my father think if he knew I betrayed him for a few beads?” She began to run toward her sleeping lodge. The snow continued to fall. As she got closer to the village, she saw the men carrying baskets of fragrant food in the direction from which she’d just come.

  She didn’t sleep that night. The next day she heard that John Smith struck a bargain with her father and sailed home with his boat filled with grain.

  All she could think about was her English brother, standing there with strings of beads.

  Captured

  She thought about that night many times over the next four years, and how she never had a chance to say good-bye to John Smith.

  It wasn’t long after that night that her father made the decision to move the village. It didn’t matter that he had the English house he had schemed to get. It didn’t matter that Werowocomoco had been home for her entire life. The whole village packed up and moved to Oropax—far away from Jamestown and the English intruders.

  She often thought of John Smith. She had wanted him to teach her to make the marks on paper that could be understood by others. She wanted to get on a white bird ship with him and sail across the ocean. She missed talking to him. In John Smith she had found someone who was as curious as she was.

  Envoys often brought news of him—his trading missions to other tribes, his exploration of the Chesapeake. One day a messenger came into the new ceremonial lodge at Oropax when Pocahontas was there with her father.

  The messenger didn’t mince words. “John Smith is dead. They took his body back to his country on a ship.”

  “He’s dead?” Pocahontas could not believe the words he spoke.

  “How did he die?” Powhatan asked.

  “From the powder they use in their guns.”

  “Gunpowder? How?” Powhatan seemed shaken.

  “They said he was on the small ship they use and he lay down to sleep. He wore that rawhide pouch he always attached to his belt. That’s where he kept his gunpowder. Someone on the ship dropped a pipe. A spark from it hit his pouch.”

  Pocahontas wanted to put her fingers in her ears like she did when she was a little girl and didn’t want to hear something.

  “It exploded and tore a hole in his side. The men said it tore all the flesh off his middle. The pain was so great, they say he jumped into the river and had to be saved from drowning.”

  “And he died?” Pocahontas could barely say the words. Her brother. Dead.

  “He was still alive when they put him on the ship to England, but he was injured unto death, they said.”

  Pocahontas left the lodge and never spoke the name John Smith again. Grief wrapped itself around her. She no longer turned somersaults or teased Matachanna or Nantaquaus. She didn’t even have any questions left she wanted to ask. But then again, she was no longer eleven years old.

  “How good it feels to be away from our village,” Pocahontas said as she, Nokomias, and Matachanna splashed in the cool water of the Potomac. The three had been staying with Japazeus, the weroance at Passapatanzy. Pocahontas had already seen sixteen summers. It had been more than three summers since she heard about the death of her English brother.

  “Look.” Matachanna pointed out on the water. “A ship.”

  “Do you remember the very first time we ever saw an English ship?” Nokomias asked. “Doesn’t that seem long ago?”

  To Pocahontas it felt like another lifetime.

  As the ship drew closer, the girls could see Japazeus running out to meet the ship.

  “It’s the ship of my friend Captain Argall,” the weroance said over his shoulder.

  The girls hardly paid any attention until the wife of Japazeus came toward them. “I want to see the ship, but Japazeus will not let me go unless I have another woman ac-company me.”

  “I’ll go,” Matachanna said.

  “No, I do not want you,” the woman said, wrinkling her nose.

  That suited Pocahontas. She didn’t trust this woman and would not want Matachanna or Nokomias going with her.

  “I want Pocahontas.”

  “Thank you, but I do not wish to go.” Something about this seemed strange.

  The woman started crying.

  Japazeus, who’d been watching from the ship’s deck, came running off the ship. “What did you do to my wife?”

  “She doesn’t want to come with me,” his wife wailed.

  “I’ll never get to see the inside of an English ship.” Her crying became louder and louder.

  “I’ll go,” Pocahontas finally said. Surely, stepping onto this ship would be less painful than listening to that woman.

  Japazeus’s wife clapped her hands, her tears gone as quickly as they came. “Follow me.”

  Pocahontas climbed up onto the deck and stood there while the woman looked around. How long will this take?

  Japazeus took Pocahontas over to the captain. “Captain Argall, this is Pocahontas.”

  She nodded her head in acknowledgment.

  Finally, the woman came back to the deck. “Captain, could we sleep aboard ship tonight? I’ve always wanted to sleep on an English ship.”

  Pocahontas started to leave.

  “I can only let you stay if you are accompanied by another woman.”

  The woman’s claw-like hands grabbed Pocahontas’s arm. “Stay, so that I can stay. It’s only one night.”

  The cajoling went on until Pocahontas gave in once again. When she settled onto the sleeping mat below deck she couldn’t shake an uncomfortable feeling. Something wasn’t right. She woke before dawn and went up to the deck just in time to see Japazeus and his wife leaving. They were thanking the captain for the copper pot and beads they held.

  “Where are you going?” Pocahontas tried to follow.

  “No. You are to stay here with me.” The captain took her by the arm. “I will treat you like a princess, but you are my captive.” He pulled her below deck and locked the door of the cabin.

  Captive. Her mind went back to the arakun caught in the boys’ trap. She felt every bit as frantic. She went to the door and began to claw at it. Stop it. Use your head, not your hands.

  She wondered if her English brother—she still could not say his name—felt this way when Opechancanough captured him. Would there be anyone to set her free?

  She lay on the mat and felt the sway of the boat as it got under way. Soon Matachanna and Nokomias would get word to her father. What kind of story would Japazeus tell them?

  “Are you awake in there?” Captain Argall’s voice shook her out of her daze as he unlocked the door. “Do you want to know why I took you?”

  Pocahontas did not speak.

  “I am holding you for ransom. I’ve already sent someo
ne to contact your father.” He waited for a response. When none came, he went on. “Do you want to know what you are worth? We’re hoping you are worth a boatload of corn, all the English prisoners your father captured, plus all the tools and weapons that your people stole.”

  Pocahontas still didn’t answer. “Well, you are talkative. I guess it’s going to be a silent time while we wait to see what you really mean to your father.”

  And wait they did.

  At one point, the captain came in to announce that her father had freed the seven prisoners and sent tools, a few broken guns, and a canoe filled with corn.

  “He says he will give another five hundred bushels of corn when we return you, but we ‘re not giving you back until we get every gun back.”

  With each day, Pocahontas felt more and more frantic. She could not stand confinement. The only way she made it through each day was to remember long rides in Nantaquaus’s canoe, cartwheeling across the damp grass, or crossing the footbridge at Werowocomoco. Sometimes she imagined herself falling into the water with a cold splash. Anything to keep from thinking about that locked door.

  “Your father doesn’t seem like he wants you back.” Captain Argall looked almost as antsy as she felt. “We’re pulling up anchor and going back to Jamestown. We’ll wait him out there.”

  As the ship got under way once again, she didn’t know whether the news was good or bad. She’d be glad to get out of this confinement, but Jamestown? She hadn’t been back since that day she made her first ponepone for the starving English.

  As the ship dropped anchor and she was taken into Jamestown, she realized how much had changed. There was hardly a face she recognized. She even saw two women in the fort. Though this was not the Jamestown of her English brother, she somehow felt as if she’d come home. Why was that?

  Forever

  Set Free

  Week after week, Pocahontas waited for her father to pay the balance of the ransom and free her. Did the English guns mean more to him than the daughter he always said he loved above all others?

  Or had he somehow found out about her betrayal to the English?

  After being held aboard the ship, Pocahontas appreciated being free to walk about Jamestown, though she did so without bothering to look up or acknowledge anyone.

  One morning as she walked by the large meetinghouse she heard something. She stopped. Had she heard the word amosens whispered? She looked around. Was it her father? No, it was not his voice, though it was a voice she recognized. She walked around the building again but heard nothing.

  I know that voice.

  The next morning she retraced her steps, hoping to hear the voice again. She didn’t precisely hear it, but she felt it. She peered inside the building but it was dark. Slipping inside she sat on a bench. She slowly breathed in and out, sensing the word.

  “Can I be of help?”

  She jumped. How long she had sat with her eyes closed, she could not have said.

  “I am Alexander Whitaker, lately of Cambridge.” He laughed a self-conscious laugh. “Well that was silly wasn’t it, since I’m in Jamestown and you’ve never been to England.”

  Something about his manner put her at ease. “I am Pocahontas.”

  “I know. I’ve heard the story of your bravery and how you saved the colony from certain death. I wasn’t here, but I’ve heard that when you came bringing food, some kneeled and thanked God for sending an angel.”

  “An angel? I’m afraid I don’t know that word.”

  “Perhaps now is a good time to speak to you about that.” He cleared his throat. “When they first brought you here, they assigned me the task of helping you polish your English and teaching you to read and write, but I didn’t want to bother you right away.”

  Pocahontas didn’t understand what he was saying.

  “Read and write. You know—” He took out a goose quill and began to make scratches on the paper.

  “That’s write? I want to learn to write.” She looked at the paper. “What is read?”

  “Read is when you can look at these words and know what they mean. Do you know what this word says?”

  She looked long at the word. She couldn’t see any pictures or symbols to give it away. “No, I do not know.”

  “It says Pocahontas.”

  She touched the word with her fingers.

  “See. Each of these letters is a symbol for a sound. This one—” He put the paper in her hands and pointed to the symbol nearest the hand she did not use as much as the other. “This one is a p. It sounds like this.” He put his lips together and made soft “puh” sounds.

  “So that is how it works. You break down the word into sounds. I always wondered how it worked.”

  He took the paper from her hands. “I didn’t approach you before this because … well, because you seemed to be in a world of your own. I didn’t know what to say to you.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “I like not that you’ve been captured.” His voice became firmer. “I do not understand the wisdom of it. It feels like a travesty.”

  “I do not understand all you say, but thank you for that.”

  “What made you decide to come into our church today?”

  “Church?” She turned that word around her tongue and wondered how one would write a “ch.” She looked around the building. “When I walked by the church yesterday I heard the voice call amosens. I came back today to see if I heard that voice again.”

  “Did you? I mean hear the voice.”

  “No, I didn’t hear the voice say amosens, but I sensed the voice inhere.”

  “What does amosens mean?”

  “In English, you say daughter.”

  “Have you ever heard this voice before?”

  Pocahontas laughed. It was the first time she’d laughed in a long time. “You ask as many questions as I used to.”

  “Used to?”

  Pocahontas paused to think about that. “When I was smaller all I ever did was run, jump, turn somersaults, and ask questions. My father loved that about me. It irritated others.” She laughed. “I wanted to know everything.”

  “When did that change?”

  Again Pocahontas had to stop. “I don’t know. Maybe it was when someone I loved died. Or maybe it was when I betrayed someone I love very much.”

  Alexander Whitaker nodded his head. “Those can be devastating. Let’s talk more about those if we continue to meet.”

  “I’d like to continue to meet. I want to learn to write. And to read.”

  He smiled. “Then meet we will. But back to my earlier question—have you ever heard that voice before?”

  “I have. Twice. Both times the voice—the person—invited me to seek Him, to know Him better.”

  “Do you know whose voice it is?”

  “I believe it is the voice of Gitchee Manitou—the Great Spirit.”

  “You did not think it Okeus, your Powhatan god?”

  “No, I knew it was not Okeus. This voice was filled with love for me. Like a father for his daughter.” As soon as she said it, she put her hand over her mouth.

  “Are you angry at your father for not ransoming you?”

  “Yes.” She stopped. “No.” She looked at the man. “Can I speak to you true?”

  “Did you know that anything said to me is secret? Because I am a minister, you can tell me anything and I shall never repeat it.”

  “A minister. I do not know that word.”

  “This is the house we have made to worship God—the one you call Gitchee Manitou. I am the one who cares for God’s house and God’s people.”

  “Then let me tell you about my father.” And she began to tell him about the great Powhatan. How he loved his daughter, but how he also had to work the best barter deal he could work. How he loved his people and wanted peace and yet would plot to capture and kill a whole nation. How he could adopt an Englishman as his own son and later order him killed. “I fear I don’t even know my father. Is he wise and good, o
r is he cunning and treacherous?”

  “For most of us, the truth probably lies somewhere between the two possibilities. We battle between what we long to be and what we fall back into.”

  He took an object off the shelf. It was covered in skin, but inside it had leaves of thinnest paper. “This is the Bible. Have you heard of it?”

  “No.”

  “This is what I’ll use to teach you to read. It is a book of God’s Word.”

  “ Gitchee Manitou’s words are in there?”

  “Yes.”

  “I want to hear them.”

  “Let me read a passage from His Word. It was written by one of His servants, Paul. ‘For the good that I would, I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.’”

  Pocahontas thought about that. “Yes. Those words are wise. We want to do good and we end up being evil.”

  “We talked about your father’s battle between good and evil. What about you?”

  Pocahontas put her hands up to her heart and hunched over. “I betrayed my father.”

  “I think I know when this happened, but tell me anyway.”

  “My father planned to kill a group of the English. I heard about it and warned them. They were on their guard and escaped death.”

  “So was it a good thing you did or a bad thing?”

  “It was both. I am glad I saved the lives of those men, but I betrayed my father and my people.”

  “Does it bother you?”

  “Every day.”

  “And you cannot go to your father and ask his forgiveness?”

  “No. Too many people would pay with their lives. The person who left the mat open on the lodge so I could hear. The person who should have been guarding the house where the men stayed. The mothers who did not know I slipped out.”

  “But you feel a need for forgiveness?”

  “More than anything.”

  Alexander Whitaker talked to her about forgiveness—how much people need it to be free. And about how God—Gitchee Manitou—sent His Son to take away those sins.

  “What do I need to do?”

  “Talk to Him. Ask Him to forgive you. That’s it. You’ll know.” He stood up. “Let me go so you can talk to Him. Can we meet here every morning? We’ll talk and I’ll teach you to read and write.”