Powhatan told his advisers that he was eager to trade with the English, to ally himself with them before one of his enemies did. The white men could make metal tools to help them grow more food, metal swords to help them make war. In return, Powhatan would grant them good land. (Like the foolish English who had come before them, the new settlers had chosen swampy, mosquito-infested land to build their “James Fort” on.) Powhatan would help them adjust, help them survive.
Remember, [Powhatan] was a king, a chief to thousands of men, women, warriors. It would have never occurred to him that he should fear a hundred white men.
The great chief called for a greeting party to go and make contact with the settlers, to welcome them, as he said, “with feasts and merrymaking,” and to offer them everything that had been discussed. His advisers agreed.
This was the moment I’d been waiting for. I rose and addressed the others. I told them that the English couldn’t be trusted. That they would never see the Algonquin as equals. That they would take advantage of them. Use them until they were strong enough to enslave them. I warned them as best I could, and I was ignored.
Powhatan’s decision was final. He would send the greeting party at first light.
“If you won’t listen to me,” said Henry, “at least let me go with them. I can help them. I know the English ways.”
Powhatan refused.
“What will they do if they see a white face among my people?” he asked. “They will think I was responsible for the massacre at Roanoke. They will think that I took you and the girl captive. They’ll make war on us.”
I think [Powhatan] was more worried that his loyal vampire might be tempted to run off, back to England. But the truth was… I was more concerned than curious. Concerned for the safety of the Algonquin, the people I’d grown close to over time. More than anything, I was concerned about Virginia.
Powhatan had forbidden anyone other than the greeting party from visiting the fort—and the punishment for defying his decrees was severe.
But I knew Virginia. And I knew it was only a matter of time before her curiosity got the best of her. She would find a way to sneak off. To see more of her own kind up close. To hear white men—men from the tribe across the ocean—speaking her native tongue. And that terrified me. The thought of inviting the English into our lives. The thought of losing her…
The thought of another man being with her…
Virginia was sixteen when Henry first looked on her with different eyes. She’d grown into a woman by then, fertile and figured. Blue eyes—the same blue Henry had seen on his voyage across the ocean, when his ship had anchored in the electric shallows of the Caribbean. Those eyes, a contrast to her wavy orange hair and lightly freckled face. An accompaniment to her radiant smile and to the dimple on one cheek when she squinted and smirked playfully, as she often did.
It was common for women of fifteen, even fourteen, to marry in those days, especially in the tribe. Many of the same little girls who’d once teased Virginia were wives and mothers by the age of sixteen.
It wasn’t so much Virginia’s age that gave Henry pangs of guilt, but all the years that had led her to that age. Years of rocking her to sleep. Bathing her. Comforting her. Fathering her. Hadn’t she said it herself? “You are my father… You are my father.” Yes, he was, in all but the biological sense. And Henry knew that he had a sacred responsibility to her. Not just to Virginia, but to Ananias and Eleanor, her real father and mother.
And yet, the thoughts came. She was so beautiful, so vibrant. She reminded me of home, I suppose. Appealed to that part of me that was still English. I chastised myself for being a sinner. I tried to get her out of my head any way I could. I made love to other women in the village (some of the unmarried Algonquin women saw me as a curiosity, I suppose, on account of my race, or my species, or both). I tried to banish Virginia from my mind by being with these women, but I only ended up picturing her in their place. Imagining what it would be like to be with her. Not just in my imagination, but to be with her. I couldn’t help myself. A vampire is no more able to control those thoughts than a human is. No less susceptible to their influence.
It had been a dreadfully hot summer, with barely a breeze to break up the humid air. For weeks on end, the Algonquin had kept to the shade, sweating from standing still and seeking relief with frequent dips in the river. So it was a welcome sight when, one evening, dark clouds appeared in the east and a storm gathered over the ocean, promising a break from the stifling heat.
I had a fire going. I was alone, beneath a blanket—a gift from one of my tribal dalliances—lying flat on my back, listening to the droplets beat down on the bark of my yehakin, counting the seconds between the flashes of lightning and the thunderclaps so loud you could feel them rattle around in your chest. With my vampire hearing, I could almost pinpoint each strike, the sound of the tree branches cracking or rainwater evaporating as the bolts made contact with the earth.
The flap [of the yehakin] opened, and Virginia came in—her clothes wet from running through the village in the downpour. She’d come to me before, as a small child, when the thunder and lightning had frightened her. But I was surprised to see her now. It had been years since she’d sought me out for comfort.
Virginia hurried to where Henry lay on his back and, without a word, slipped under the blanket with him and curled up beside him, her face toward the fire.
I didn’t know what to do. Should I say something to comfort her? Put an arm around her? She pressed her back into me, the shape of her body conforming to the shape of mine.
A succession of flashes appeared in the seams of the bark walls. The thunderclaps followed just seconds later, Virginia flinching with each one. The storm was getting closer. Almost on top of them. Virginia rolled over so that she was facing Henry, their noses almost touching.
She looked at me with those bright-blue eyes. There was no mistaking them. There was no mistaking why she’d come or what this was. It was the moment I’d been secretly fantasizing about. Praying would come and praying would never come. Now that it was here, I was frightened.
I wish I could say that I resisted. That I held firm to the so-called moral high ground. But love makes us do things that would repulse us under any other circumstances.
I rolled over and kissed her. I ripped her clothes from her. I put my mouth on her breasts, kissed her from her neck to her stomach. I tasted her. Slid into her. Came in her. A year’s worth of bottled-up lust breaking open.
Henry and Virginia hardly left the yehakin over the next week.
I couldn’t think of anything else but being beside her naked skin. Being inside her. Seeing her face flush red as she came. We barely spoke that first week. We just… fucked. I don’t mean to be vulgar, but if I’m being honest, that’s the only word that does it justice. We fucked, we sweated, we groaned, we collapsed, we started over. We drank each other until there wasn’t a drop left in either of our bodies.
It was beautiful… and sinful. It was the same feeling I’d had when I’d tasted my first human blood. On one hand, I was disgusted with myself. I knew, in a moral sense, that what I was doing was a sin. Yet it felt so good… so much better than I’d imagined anything could feel, that I was filled with a warmth, with a joy, in spite of my guilt.
Henry and Virginia were careful to hide the affair from the Algonquin. Swearing each other to secrecy. Sneaking around in the dead of night.
Naturally, everyone in the tribe knew within a week.
The others thought it a good match. It was only natural, after all, that the two English should fall in love with each other, even if one of them was a re’apoke—a devil. Powhatan approved the union, and Henry and Virginia were promptly married in an Algonquin ceremony.
It was a good year. A happy year. So happy that I was able to put all thoughts of sin behind me. Able to move on from mourning Edeva and the child I’d lost and focus on my new life with my new bride and, hopefully, new children. It was customary for Algonq
uin couples to get pregnant as quickly as possible. We tried—God knows we did. But nothing happened.
Many of the facts of my condition were still unknown to me, including my infertility. Immortality comes at a price, it seems. The only way we can reproduce is through blood and death.
In the spring of 1607, John Smith came to the New World, and Henry’s happiness ended abruptly.
From the moment word of the landing reached us, I felt a sense of dread. A feeling that somehow, no matter what happened between the Algonquin and the English, things would never be the same between Virginia and me again.
As Henry had predicted, his young wife was overcome by curiosity. She was desperate to go to the fort. To see the English up close and meet more of her kind. But the great chief had spoken. She would have to wait.
On May 28th, 1607, Powhatan’s greeting party left for James Fort, without Henry or Virginia. Two days later, it returned, grim faced and full of musket holes.
They’d shot at the Algonquin on sight. It seemed the English weren’t interested in trading with the natives. They weren’t taking any chances, not after the disappearance of the Roanoke Colony.
Powhatan was furious. If the English insisted on war, then he would give it to them. In the coming weeks, he sent raiding parties to attack the fort, setting off a series of skirmishes that claimed lives on both sides.8 But despite having a “good devil” at his disposal, Powhatan refused to send Henry with them.
He was still afraid that I would run off or change allegiances if I got too close to my fellow Englishmen.
Under constant attack, and without the Indians to trade with, the English found themselves on the verge of ruin. Just a few short months after their arrival, 60 of the original 104 settlers were dead—some as the result of skirmishes with the natives, but most of starvation and disease. Eager to find better land to settle, Captain John Smith ventured inland alone. During his scout, an Algonquin hunting party happened across him, took him prisoner, and brought him back to Powhatan.
This is the part everyone’s always gotten wrong. The famous story of Pocahontas throwing herself on John Smith, begging her father to spare his life? The moment that’s burned into the collective American memory?
It never happened.
Contrary to most historical accounts, it was Virginia Dare, not Pocahontas, who intervened in the execution of Captain John Smith—as evidenced by the hair color and fair complexion of the Algonquin girl in this rare illustration.
It was first light when John Smith was marched into the village. Henry and Virginia were lying together, alone in their yehakin, when a commotion roused them from sleep.
We heard voices. People yelling out, “They have the white chief!” and “Let us kill him,” and so on. Virginia jumped out of bed and began to dress. I told her to wait, that we should find out what was happening before she went running off. It wasn’t that I thought she was in any danger. In truth, it was my fear of having her see another English face up close, especially while I was trapped in the dark, helpless to follow her out in the sunshine. I asked her to stay with me, but she left. She was too curious.
Smith was brought to the center of the village and presented to Powhatan. Virginia was among the hundred or more Algonquin who had gathered to catch a glimpse of the “English chief.” Pocahontas, then twelve years old, stood beside her father.
All I could do was listen as the men of the hunting party told Powhatan how they’d stumbled upon Smith while he was bathing in a creek, more than ten miles inland from the English fort. How they’d chased him as he ran through the woods.
Henry listened as Powhatan passed sentence: “He is a murderer of many Algonquin. He is a trespasser on Algonquin land. It is right that his blood should be spilled.”
Cheers went up among the gathered. Powhatan gave a nod to the hunting party. Two of them held Smith down on the ground, while the other two drew clubs. They were going to beat his skull in.
Realizing that he’d just been sentenced to death, Smith spoke up as he was forced into the dirt: “I am the leader of my people! A representative of a mighty king! My death will bring severe consequences!”
Not understanding or caring about what the white man was saying, one of the hunting party drew back his club over Smith’s head and prepared to strike.
“Stop!”
An orange mane pushed through the rows of black-haired onlookers.
It wasn’t Pocahontas but Virginia who intervened on Smith’s behalf. Virginia who threw herself on top of him and begged Powhatan to spare his life.9 She was desperate to make peace between the Algonquin and the English.
On seeing another white face, Smith himself turned as white as a sheet. How could it be? A white girl… here?
“Get away from him!” yelled Powhatan. “He has killed many Algonquin. We will send his body back to their fort, and they will fear us.”
“They will hate you!” said Virginia, speaking Algonquin. “And they will send more English to kill you.”
The other members of the tribe were becoming agitated. They started yelling out, “Of course she cries for her own kind!” “Who cares what a white-faced girl thinks!” I was desperate to be out there with her. I couldn’t remember ever feeling so helpless.
“You don’t understand!” said Virginia, speaking Algonquin, “I share this man’s color, but he is not like me. You are my tribe. You are my people. But if you let him live, he will be in your debt. He’ll go and tell the other English of your mercy, and they will stop making war on us.”
Us.
I had been wrong about Virginia’s hunger for the company of other Englishmen. Yes, she was curious to see them, but only in the same way the rest of the tribe was. She wasn’t looking for a place where she fit in. She’d already found that place.
Powhatan was a famously stubborn and decisive man. He wasn’t used to being argued with, especially in front of others. But somehow, Virginia convinced him that sparing Smith was the right course of action.
To the astonishment of the tribe, Powhatan spared John Smith’s life. He sent him back to James Fort with a warning: Attack another Algonquin, or settle our lands without permission, and we’ll drive you back into the sea.
But rather than interpret Powhatan’s mercy as a sign of strength and goodwill, Smith saw it as weakness.
The first thing he did was tell his fellow settlers that he’d been “face-to-face with the butchers of Roanoke” and that there were still “white prisoners” among the Algonquin.
Days later, Smith led a raiding party into one of the Algonquin satellite tribes. There, he and his men killed upward of seventy villagers, many of them women and children. They captured one of the lesser chief’s wives and her children, fleeing with them in a boat downriver. During the voyage back to James Fort, their mother was forced to watch as the English threw her children over the side, leveled their muskets at the swimming children, and, as Smith recorded in his diary, “shot their braynes in the water.” They waited until making landfall before executing the mother by sword.
Powhatan came to Henry’s yehakin that night. The English had dishonored themselves, he said. Royal blood had been spilled. It was time for the good devil to make things right.
He told me to go to James Fort and make war on them. To kill all the English. He told me that I would do as he commanded or Virginia and I would no longer be welcome among his people. He would consider us his “enemies” and send his warriors to hunt and kill us.
Henry was given until the next sundown to decide. With that, Powhatan left.
There I was… caught between murdering fifty-odd Englishmen and being banished and marked for death by the people who’d been our family for nearly twenty years.
The way Henry saw it, there was only one option, one chance for all sides to emerge unscathed: he and Virginia would surrender themselves to John Smith. Without the pretext of rescuing captured English prisoners, perhaps the settlers of James Fort would leave the Algonquin alone.
r /> It took some time for me to convince Virginia. She’d always been curious about the English, always wondered what it would be like to live among them. But now, faced with leaving behind the only family she’d ever known, she hesitated. But she also knew there was no other way. She loved her people so much, she was willing to give them up to keep them safe.
By the light of the stars, Henry and Virginia slipped out of the village and made their way to James Fort, where, standing in the torchlight of the walled compound’s center, they presented themselves to John Smith.
I spoke first, offering us up as tokens of goodwill. We would renounce our place in the tribe, I told him, and swear fealty to the Crown, on the condition that he left the Algonquin alone.
“If we give ourselves,” asked Virginia in her oddly accented English, “will you make peace with them?”
Smith looked her over. “You care that much for these savages?”
“These ‘savages’ are my”—Virginia had to search for the right word—“family.”
Smith considered her with a mixture of revulsion and disappointment, then turned to Henry. “Come, then,” he said. “Let us make peace with your family.”
Under cover of darkness, Smith and twenty mounted Englishmen rode in formation toward the village, rifles slung on their backs and swords at their sides. Henry and Virginia shared a horse toward the rear.
I didn’t think anything of [the guns and swords]. The English carried them everywhere outside the walls of the fort. We were going to end a war, after all. Not start one.