Tidewater
By Errnge
By Errnge
Chapter One:
The Lone Ship
The Sun rose upon a cold morning on the bay. Ice fringed the banks of the Patawomeke River as it flowed out into the ocean. Frost laced the changing leaves, as if the fairies of coming winter had made their first dance upon them. Serenity and indifference, hand-in-hand, marched across the bay and onto land as the sunrise revealed the terrible events of the night before.
Richard’s hands shook nervously as he lit his tobacco cigar, but the blood upon them counteracted anything the soothing smoke could do. Still,
the cigar wrapped in leaves was some small comfort.
“The Queen will be pleased when she hears of our deeds here,” Captain Hawkins said loudly some yards away. “This was a great victory, not only for our people and our Queen, but for God and Jesus Christ.”
“God is vengeance,” one man said in response.
“God is English,” Richard muttered to himself.
All around them, lying on the soft ground, were corpses. Men from a galley that now floated vacantly in the Chesepiook Bay: Spaniards, who had come with murderous intent. At least a hundred of them were dead in their own blood, else floating idly on the shore. At Richard’s feet was one Spaniard with an arrow through his neck. The cadaver was frozen in its violent death throws, legs sprawled out, hands clasping at its throat, and a look of panic and fear carved upon the face as if by a sculptor.
“Mister Ryder,” Captain Hawkins called to Richard, “I’d very much like to see what is stored upon yonder ship.”
“Methinks at least one of these dinghies is still floatable,” Richard responded. “What happens if there be more Spaniards on board?”
Hawkins smiled at that, revealing an incomplete set of teeth, and a remainder left in poor condition. Through his yellow, incomplete smile, the Captain said simply: “Show them the mercy they showed Plymouth.”
Richard immediately understood. Flicking some blood and mud from his boots, he walked to the shoreline, where the low-hanging trees opened up and several small dinghies were pulled up to the coast. Arrows punctured several of them, and most of them looked to be somehow damaged in the fray, whether by accident or malicious purpose. Richard found one boat that looked like its hull had been kicked in by a horse. He looked over, and saw just one such beast lying propped up against the trunk of a sapling birch. He looked back to the dinghies, puffing smoke as he did so. Around him, Englishmen set to looting the bodies and collecting anything of value. Anything unusable was thrown into the bay; better in the belly of the sea than in the hands of the Powhatan.
Finally, Richard found what he was looking for: a small dinghy that he could row by himself to the galley anchored offshore alone. Though the boat could certainly hold as many as ten men, the Englishmen could ill-afford to send too many men onto a ship without certainty of its worth, especially when Indians might be lurking nearby. With the help of a couple of men, Richard pushed off from the coast, and began rowing slowly toward the galley.
They had seen its floating up the Chesepiook the night before, lanterns lit. By the flag raised upon its mast, they knew the ship to be Spanish, undoubtedly an excursion to destroy the English outposts in the Tidewater. Captain Hawkins was the one who organized the ambush, knowing that if the bastards came ashore, they had best be ready for them. The Spanish must have thought they were under attack by Indians at first. Arrows whizzed by them silently in the night. Their lanterns and torches made easy targets. The Spaniards fired their muskets blindly into the night, not knowing from where their assailants came. Some of them hunkered down into a defensive formation around their dinghies, but found they couldn’t escape back to their ship as more Englishmen came by canoe at their back. Many Spanish were captured, but more were executed. Those left alive would be sold as slaves in Elizabeth Town. The last of the Spanish assault had been cornered by the mouth of the river. Long since out of shot, the ensuing battle would be fought hand-to-hand. Englishmen emerged from the brush with pikes and swords, and quickly overwhelmed the enemy just in time for the sun to rise in the East.
When Richard made it to the ship, he heard Englishman already on board, most likely a few of the men on canoes from the earlier blockade. He grappled his way up to the deck to find he was right. Standing around a number of tied up Spanish were five Englishmen, two of them good friends of Richard’s.
“Harry, George, give me a hand,” He said as he tried to lift his legs onto the deck.
“Richard Ryder!” George exclaimed as he came.
Harry was close behind, saying: “You should see the things the Spanish have on board. Gold, silver, pearls…”
George and Harry hefted Richard on deck. Also aboard the ship, attending to the captured crew, was an older Welshman named Richard Hakluyt, and two Englishmen named Charles Howard, the son of the Earl, and Daniel Gilmore, a blacksmith in the town nearby. “Damn good morning, wouldn’t you say?” Richard made a week smile.
“Depends on your definition of the word ‘good’ I suppose,” Hakluyt said.
“What do you mean, of course it’s a good day,” Harry threw a hefty arm over the old Welshman. “We captured a Spanish ship and defeated the men inside it. Providence has smiled on us this day.”
“Indeed, I don’t know how it could have gone any better,” George concurred.
George and Harry Brown were cousins, though they looked like brothers. Standing next to each other, one could see they were both of strong build and of a fierce disposition. Long sandy hair and chilling green eyes, both were quite admired by the ladies of Elizabeth Town. Richard Ryder certainly envied their looks.
“Mister Hakluyt is just a grim old man,” Charles Howard said. “But what to do with the captives? Has Captain Hawkins given orders?”
“Yea,” Richard said, noticing that his cigar had gone out. “Where are those lanterns? My tobacco’s gone out.”
“Focus, man!” Howard growled. “What orders did the captain give?”
Sighing, Richard said: “Captain Hawkins had requested that we give any captives on this ship the same mercy the Spanish showed Plymouth.”
Harry and George, men who grew up in Devonshire, smiled cruelly. Even Hakluyt gave a smirk.
“Well,” Howard said, drawing his blade, “So be it.”
Gagged, the Spanish muffled screams of protest were quickly cut off by the slashing of blades. After the prisoners were all swiftly dispatched, they were thrown overboard into the bay.
After he shoved the final body over the edge, Hakluyt wiped the blood from his hands with a handkerchief and tisked: “This does not bode well.”
“Prophetic as usual,” Richard smirked, sitting down on a barrel and kicking some of the sand from his boots as he spoke. “What’s the danger Welshman?”
“Spanish ships haven’t been seen this far up the Bay in almost a decade,” Hakluyt said, staring out onto the water, as the bloodied shore where the ship’s former crew no lay rotting. “Not since we first arrived in this God forsaken land. If a ship sailed this far north without Raleigh or any of the other lords to the south taking notice…”
“It does ring a bit unlikely,” Daniel Gilmore, the blacksmith, piped in.
“They could have sailed along the Eastern Shore,” Howard debated. “Maybe their plan was to catch us by surprise.”
“Now that would be ironic,” Harry laughed grimly.
“This conversation is useless,” Howard continued. “Now, let’s bring this ship ashore, load some of our boys on here, and sail this vessel to Queens harbour. If the Captain wishes it.”
Howard’s final words came as an afterthought. A noble, he was quite unused to following the orders of the likes of Captain John Hawkins, one of the many great men who fell from grace after the Great Spanish Invasion of 1588.
After the Virgin Queen was forced to flee for her life in the wake of the Duke of Parma and his Imperial dogs.
After burnings and hangings and all kinds of evils befell the English people.
After they escaped to the land across the sea on sturdy ships and carved out a new home for God-fearing Englishmen who still pledged allegiance to Queen Elizabeth and a Protestant faith.
This was Virginia in the Lord’s Year of 1599.
“God save us,” Richard whispered, looking at the blood on his hands. “And God save the Queen.”
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