Centuries of June by Keith Donohue Page A

in all remained forever on—or should it be in—the island: besides Mr. Paine and Mr. Samuell, there were Jeffery Briars, Richard Lewis, William Hitchman, and the baby girl born to the Rolfes, who had been christened Bermuda, buried there nearby Sir Somers’s garden.
    They were nearly a year in making two smaller ships, which Gates, he named Deliverance and Somers, he named the other the Patience , both hewn from the native cedar and the oaken remnants of the Venture . Jane labored as a boy alongside those shipbuilders, taking care at all times to disguise herself and keep her womanhood hid, never to wash, to hack at her hair when it grew long, to sweat, to swear, to feign to drink, andseem as black and rough as any mariner. When the cahows, or the devil birds, so called for the hellish noise of their nightcalls, a clamor of unholy voices that would set fright to any Christian, when they built their nests and laid their eggs, she joined the hunting parties, tho to call it a hunt makes more sporting the outright killing of these birds. They were so tame, so plentiful, and so curious, complete in fearlessness, that the men could wander among the nests with clubs and smite the cocks and hens, taking in a single night a hundred or more, which when cooked in water or roasted were as good as any English goose. The bird hunters would return to St. Catherine’s Beach laden with their fare, and Jane among them, burdened under the weight of a score or more.
    As water is in water or a palm tree in a winter fog, she vanished as a true person, hidden but still there, plain to see. No one knew her as anything but a boy without a master, for Ravens had flown away, and she had no true friend but Mr. Chard, who sought her out once again as April gave way to May and the new ships were judged ready for the sea. He approached her at evensong, took her arm and led her away from the others to a private spot beyond the thatched cabin that constituted Mr. Bucke’s church.
    “I have a mind to stay,” he told her. “Why trust yourself to the mercy of these wondrous false crafted boats, these paper sailors? Think on Ravens, the best navigator among us, and he and the men and the boat at the bottom of the cold, dark sea.”
    She shuddered at the picture in her mind, remembering the houricane and a world made of water. Why had she left The Moon and Seven Stars, her mother, and her four baby sisters?
    “And what is in Virginia that can better what we have here? I have heard tell that savages haunt the woods near James’s Town, red men who go about naked and not a word of English. The people there live in fear of their very lives and suffer want of food and shelter. The winters worse than the highlands of the Scots, and the summers hotter thanHades. Why leave this Eden for that purgatory?” Chard threw his arm around John’s shoulders and drew the boy to him. “Stay with us, I entreat you, and spare the risk. If they live, they will surely send ships from England, much better beamed and planked. Mr. Carter will remain and Mr. Waters and myself.”
    A strange comfort to be under Chard’s wing, and she thought of that night at St. Catherine’s Beach when they first shared a bottle of palm wine, and how fine he seemed to her, the warmth of his bronzed skin, the wildness of his beard, his hair, his eyes. “Yes,” she said, “yes. I will wait with you. Wait for rescue from an English ship and not these barks out in our own bight.” Thus casting her lot with him, she longed for some sign of his affection, but Chard did nothing more than clap a broad hand against her narrow back and chuckle with approval.
    Great ceremony attended the launch of the Patience and the Deliverance on the fair day in May of 1610 when the marooned company departed from Bermuda for the bays of the Chesipiak. Gates had erected a cross made of timber from the wreck and to it nailed a twelvepence coin and a copper sign Jane could not read. ’Twas Christopher Carter who