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IT IS NIGHT. I am sound asleep until Samuel lifts me up from bed. I am small, only three and a half years old. My feet dangle to his knees as he carries me out into the night.
“Where we going?” I ask sleepily.
“Shhh,” he whispers, and swings his long strides through the sleeping fort. I trust him. He has always been like a brother to me, a part of our family, as he has no other family. I know that he saved my life and my mother’s life when I was a tiny baby.
“I need you to use your knowing,” he says to me.
I rest my head against his shoulder and nod. I will do as he asks. I will use the knowing for him, and never tell another living soul about it, as Samuel has warned me not to.
A cat scurries out of our way. An owl calls out her eerie “ Who? Who? Who? ”
“They have kidnapped Matoaka,” he says. “They took her away from her family and hid her here. I want you to tell me where she is.”
He has stopped walking now. We are at the center of the fort, near the huge cook pot. I straighten up to look into his eyes. “Why?” I ask. “Why did they take her away?” It feels like a very bad thing has happened. If I find her for Samuel, will I undo the bad thing?
Samuel begins to try to explain it all to me: how Captain Argall is holding her for ransom, to get her father, Chief Powhatan, to send us back prisoners and guns. But it is too hard for me to understand, and I am already looking for Matoaka, searching with my mind. I feel each cottage in the fort, the sleeping babies, their dozing mothers and snoring fathers. I close my eyes—the knowing works better that way—and breathe in. I smell urine from full chamber pots, potatoes rotting in storage, lard from the soap-making kettle.
I try to remember Matoaka. Samuel took me to meet her only once, in the Patawomeck village. I played with her little baby boy and she gave me a string of white shells to wear as a necklace. I try to remember the feel of her, her straight, proud back, her sparkling dark eyes and long black hair, her laughter as she and Samuel shared stories about when they were children, told half in English and half in Algonquian. Her husband, Kocoum, a strong young man with gentle hands, patted me on the head and said, “ Netoppew. ” Samuel said it meant “friend.”
I take the feeling of her and send my thoughts out to search. Matoaka, where are you?
A breeze lifts the dust and makes me cough. And it comes to me—like the ping when the blacksmith hits the anvil just right, or one loud clear note played on a flute. I know where she is.
I wriggle down from Samuel’s arms and pull him past the cook pot, between the chicken coop and the barn, past the church, to the reverend’s cottage.
“Here.” I lay my hands against the wattle and daub of the cottage. “She is here.”
Samuel scowls and grumbles something about them hiding their “treachery” behind “piety,” words I won’t understand until I am older. Then he drops to his knees and sets to work, widening a hole in the wattle and daub already started by the rats. He pulls off chunks until the opening is as big as his fist. Then he leans in and whispers loudly.
“Matoaka,” he says, using the name only her family and close friends use. “It’s us, Samuel and Ginny. We’ve come to get you free.”
We hear the soft padding of bare feet. I push Samuel out of the way. I want to touch Matoaka, to give her some comfort. I reach my hand inside and feel her cold, shaky hand grasp mine. The knowing comes over me with terrible force, making clear what her fate will be. Tears run down my cheeks. I pull my hand away.
Samuel puts his mouth to the opening. He whispers, telling her how what they’ve done is wrong, how we’re going to get her out of here.
But I know he is powerless. And I know that Matoaka, or Pocahontas as most people call her, will never see her husband and small son again. She will remain a kidnapped prisoner for a very long time.