‘I’m not his advisor,’ J said. ‘I speak to the king – when I ever see him – about plants and his garden.’
The man nodded. ‘So who does advise him now?’
J thought for a moment. It all seemed a long way away and of little interest in this new country. ‘The queen,’ he said. ‘And Archbishop Laud.’
The man made a grimace and turned his head to spit but then checked the movement when he saw the woman glare. ‘Beg pardon. So he hasn’t called a parliament?’
J shook his head. ‘He hopes to rule without one.’
‘I heard he was halfway to being a Papist.’
‘I don’t know anything about that.’
‘I heard that he has taken so many fines and so much wealth into his own hands that he does not need to call a parliament for them to vote taxes, that he lets his wife worship openly as a Papist, and that daily there are men and women in the country crying out for him to change,’ the man said precisely.
John blinked at the accuracy and malice of the description. ‘I thought you were royalists in Virginia?’
‘Not all of us,’ the man said with a hard smile.
‘Where are you going to find your plants?’ the woman interrupted. ‘There’s nothing grown up and down the river but tobacco.’
‘Surely people farm other crops?’
She shook her head. ‘We keep beasts – or at any rate they keep themselves. But with the fish jumping out of the river and the animals in the forest it’s not worth the labour of doing more than fishing and hunting. Besides, we can trade for anything we need with the Indians. They can do the labour of farming for us. We can all be squires here.’
‘I thought I’d travel round,’ J said. ‘Hire a horse and ride round the country, see what I can find.’
They both looked at him and rudely laughed in his face.
‘Hire a horse!’ the woman exclaimed. ‘There’s not more than half a dozen horses in the whole plantation. You might as well ask for a coach and four.’
J kept his temper. ‘I see I have much to learn.’
She rose from the table and went to the fire. ‘Dark morning,’ she said irritably. She bent to the fire and lit what looked like a little twig of kindling. To J’s surprise it burnt with a bright clear flame at the very tip, like a specially made taper. She rested it on a small holder, placed on the stone hearth for that purpose, and came back to the table.
‘What’s that?’
She glanced back without interest. ‘We call it candlewood. I buy it from the Indians every autumn.’
‘But what sort of wood is it?’
‘Candlewood,’ she said impatiently.
‘But from what sort of tree?’
She looked at him as if he were foolish to be asking something that no-one else cared about. ‘How should I know? I pay the Indians to fetch it for me. D’you think I go out into the woods to gather my own candlewood? D’you think I make my own spoons from spoonwood? D’you think I make my own sugar from the sugar tree or my own soap from the soapberry?’
‘Candlewood? Spoonwood?’ J had a moment of wild imagining, thinking of a tree growing candles, a tree growing spoons, a bush growing soap. ‘Are you trying to make a fool of me?’
‘No greater fool than you are already – what else should I call them but what they are?’
‘What you want,’ the man said pacifically, pushing away his empty bowl and taking out a pipe and filling it with rich golden tobacco leaves, ‘is an Indian, a savage. One to use as your own. To take you out into the forest and show you all these things. Take you out in a canoe up and down the river and show you the things you want to know.’
‘Don’t any of the planters know these things?’ J asked. He felt fearful at the thought of being guided by an Indian. There had been too much talk in London of brown men armed with knives of stone who crept into your house and cut your throat while you slept.
The woman hawked and spat into the fireplace. ‘They don’t hardly know how to plant!’ she said. ‘Everything they know they learned from the Indians. You can find yourself an Indian to tell you what the soapberry tree is. Civilised folks here aren’t interested in anything but gold and tobacco.’
‘How shall I find an Indian to guide me?’ J asked. For a moment he felt as helpless as a child, and he thought of his father’s travels – to Russia, to the Mediterranean, to Europe. He had never asked his father if he had felt fear, or worse than fear: the babyish whimper of someone lost, friendless in a strange land. ‘Where would I find a safe Indian?’
‘No such thing as a safe Indian,’ the woman said sharply.
‘Peace!’ J’s fellow lodger said quietly. ‘If you’re serving the king you must have papers, a safe pass, that sort of thing.’
J felt inside his shirt where the precious royal order was wrapped in oilskin. ‘Of course.’
‘Best see the governor then,’ the man suggested. ‘If you’re from the king and you’ve got some influence at court, the governor’ll have time for you. God knows he has no time for honest working men trying to make a living here.’
‘Does he have a court?’ J asked.
‘Knock on his door,’ the woman said impatiently. ‘Court indeed! He’s lucky to have a girl to open the door for him.’
J stood up from the table. ‘Where shall I find his house?’
‘Set beyond the Back Road,’ the man said. ‘I’ll stroll over with you now.’
‘I have to wash first,’ J said nervously. ‘And get my hat and coat.’
The woman snorted disparagingly. ‘He’ll want to paint and powder next,’ she said.
The man smiled. ‘I’ll wait for you outside,’ he said and went out, closing the door gently behind him.
There was neither jug nor ewer in the attic, nor a mirror. Everything that had to be brought from England was at a premium in the new colony. The most trivial things which J had taken for granted in England were rare luxuries here. J washed under the pump in the yard, flinching from the icy splash, and unconsciously keeping his lips tight shut, fearful of drinking the foul water.
His fellow lodger was waiting for him outside the house, in the shade of a tree, sipping from a mug of small ale. The sun beat down on the blinding dust all around him. He nodded when he saw J and slowly got to his feet. ‘Don’t rush,’ he advised him. ‘A man can die of hurry in this climate.’
He led the way down the track that ran between the houses. The road was no dirtier than a back road in London but somehow it seemed worse, with the heat of the sun beating down on it and the bright light which dazzled J and made him squint. Hens clucked around in the dust and shied away from their strolling feet at every street corner, and every garden, every drainage ditch, was filled with the ungainly sprout and flapping leaves of the tobacco plant.
The governor, when J managed to gain admission to the small stone-built house, did nothing more than repeat the lodging-house woman’s advice. ‘I shall write you a note,’ he said languidly. ‘You can travel from plantation to plantation and the planters will make you welcome, if that is what you wish. There’s no difficulty there. Most of the people you meet will be glad of the company and a new face.’
‘But how shall I find my way around?’ J asked. He was afraid that he sounded humble, like a fool.
The governor shrugged. ‘You must get yourself an Indian servant,’ he said. ‘To paddle you in a canoe.