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IT IS THE flush of full summer. Soon I will be five years old. My mother’s belly is tight and round, and my father has announced proudly to me that before long I will have a baby brother. I know the child is a girl, but I don’t tell him.
Right after breakfast, Samuel arrives at our cottage. “Ready?” he asks my mother.
She is combing the knots out of my dark brown curls and I am wincing with each pull. I’m glad Samuel has arrived to save me from this hair combing.
“Yes,” Mum says. She ties back my hair, knots and all, and puts my bonnet on securely. “Virginia, come. Let’s see what you have learned.”
We set off for the meadow and the forest. My mother knew herbs and healing in England, taught by her mother, and Samuel learned about the herbs here in the New World from the natives when he lived in the Warraskoyack village. Some of the herbs here are the same as in England, but many are not. Samuel taught the new ones to my mother, and they have both been teaching me.
There is a din of crickets and cicadas, the sweet music of late summer. A crow watches from a tree, squawking out his comments, “ Caw! Caw! ”
I am still too young to leave the fort on my own, and so this foray into the wild is a rare adventure. I am ecstatic. The forest is where the trees and plants, even the rocks and dirt, let me know they are alive with the same life and joy that is in me. At the edge of the wood I run to a tree and lay my palms against the trunk. I feel the life pulsing under the bark. Then I lean in close. “Hello,” I whisper. I bound away, knowing I won’t exactly hear a “hello” back.
I find a big rock and sit down on it. There is life here, too, though it is so quiet I have to sit very still to feel it. “How are you today?” I ask softly. I already know the answer. If the rock could speak, it would say, “Happy.”
Next, I am on to the ferns, holding their fronds, feeling the life of water and sun running through them.
“Look at her,” I hear my mother say to Samuel. “Such a strange child.”
I snatch my hands away from the ferns. Quickly, I pick up a stick and look for some dirt to dig in. That is what other children would do.
“She’s just having fun being out of the fort,” Samuel tells my mother.
“Virginia, come here,” my mother says. “Let’s see what you remember.”
I am very happy to be tested. For this, I am allowed to touch the plants without my mother worrying that I am acting strange. She thinks I am remembering what she has taught me on other visits to the meadow and forest, and some of it I do remember, but it is even easier to listen to each plant for the correct answer.
I find a slippery elm tree. I recite how the inner bark can be made into a poultice to heal wounds, or taken as a medicine for sore throats. Then, at the forest’s edge, I find black raspberry—the leaves to speed childbirth, and the roots to treat the summer flux. Next, I find the velvet-soft leaves of mullein, for coughs and earaches. I point to the stinging nettles. These I do not touch. “For skin problems,” I say, but since touching them causes skin problems, I think that staying away from them might be the best remedy of all. I find purple coneflower in full bloom. “It’s good for infections and fevers,” I say.
Mum claps her hands. “Good girl,” she says.
“It’s also good for snakebites,” I say, gently stroking the large delicate petals.
Mum shakes her head. “No, that is not correct.”
I drop my hands to my sides. The knowing is clear. This flower can help get rid of the poison of a snakebite. “We should try it,” I say very softly.
Mum gives Samuel a worried glance. He simply shrugs.
“All right, you did quite well,” Mum says.
“Soon the colonists will come to you for healing instead of your mum,” Samuel teases.
Mum gives me scissors so that I can help cut and gather the plants. As we work, I eavesdrop. Samuel tells my mother the news he has heard as he has traveled to other plantations and to Indian villages.
“Since the wedding in April, there’s been no fighting. Not a single arrow or musket has been fired,” Samuel says. “People are calling it ‘The Peace of Pocahontas.’”
“Thanks be to God,” my mother says.
“Have you heard, Governor Dale tried to take another wife?” Samuel asks.
“That man has no shame,” Mum says.
Samuel continues. “He sent a messenger to Chief Powhatan to ask for the hand of his eleven-year-old daughter in marriage.”
Mum raises her eyebrows. “And did Lady Dale send word from England that this would be fine with her?”
Samuel laughs. “The chief said no, of course. He told the messenger the girl was in a village three days’ walk away. He will keep her well protected, I’m sure.”
“Good,” my mother says. “Governor Dale is an evil man, with his martial law and whippings and hangings. I wish the Company would send back Captain Smith and send Governor Dale home to England with his tail between his legs.”
Mum and Samuel continue their gossip and gathering, and I am free to play in the magic of the forest.
. . .
It is a day without breezes, and mosquitoes buzz around our heads even inside the cottage. Mum and I work together to hang herbs to dry. I tie the strings and she lifts the bunches to hang them on nails set in the rafters.
There is a knock at the door. It is a gentleman. Mum gives him a curious look. The gentlemen and nobles normally go to the doctor for their healing, while the common folk come to my mother or Jane Wright, the left-handed midwife.
The gentleman is distraught, his face twisted in fear. It is his wife who is ill—very ill. The doctor has already seen her and given her medicine, but she has not improved. Can my mother help? He is afraid she is dying.
Mum asks the man what his wife is feeling, and as he speaks, she chooses which plants to bring. “These will help,” she says.
I go with her and we follow the man to his cottage. Mum has me wait outside. There is a boy, a little older than I, sitting in the dirt in front of the cottage. He is sullen, as fearful as his father. He glares at me. It is the first time I’ve seen this boy.
. . .
The second time I see the boy, and his father, is a few days later. It is evening. The gentleman pounds on our door and when my father opens it, he grabs my da by his shirt collar.
“She said she could help!” he cries. “I should have known better than to come to the likes of her. The doctor had given her medicine. She would have gotten better if that woman”—he points a long, accusing finger at my mother—“hadn’t laid her cursed hands on her.”
My da is trying to close the door on him. The boy is behind his father, staring at me with a hateful look.
“I will make a report,” the man shouts. Then he narrows his eyes and lowers his voice. “I know who your mother was, Mrs. Laydon.” He turns, grabs his son by the arm, and drags him away.
Mum collapses into a chair and hangs her head into her hands. “I should have known better than to try to heal a gentleman’s wife,” she says miserably.
“You could not turn him away,” Da says. He lays a hand on her shoulder.
I am afraid to ask any questions.
. . .
My mother and Jane Wright work together in our cottage. It is night, and the candles flicker over their needles as they sew. They, and other women as well, have been assigned to make shirts for the servants of the colony. I am seated at the table with them, practicing my stitches with my own piece of cloth, needle, and thread. Now that I am almost five, it is time I learned to sew. When I hear my mother yelp, I look up.
“It broke again,” she says. There is a hint of desperation in her voice. “The thread is bad. We won’t have nearly enough to finish.”
“Mum, use mine.” I hold my little bit of thread out to her.
She shakes her head. She and Jane are looking at each other.
“A trap?” Mum asks Jane.
Jane frowns. She picks at the woven cloth at the bottom of the shirt she is working on and it begins to unravel. The thread that comes free is strong and good. “A trap we might be able to avoid,” she says.
They work quickly, unraveling the bottoms of the shirts, using the good thread to finish their stitching. They have no choice. There is no other thread.
I feel their panic and I don’t understand it. I try to rest my cheek against my mother’s arm, but she shrugs me off. I go to bed while they are still working.