‹ Prequel: A Good Run
Status: 2 of 7 volumes. Active.
The White Doe
Ten
The time passed. Summer's heat gave way to autumn, then to winter. The colony continued to work hard, finishing the needed repairs to the fort, erecting houses for each family and making sure that the gate was well barred at night.
If it had not been for the kindness of Manteo and the Croatoans, they would have died during that bitter winter. But Manteo and the sharp-eyed medicine man named Okisko, whom Manteo called "the flyer" and who wore a flattened woodpecker on his head and the head of a fox on his breechclout, kept bringing the hungry Englishmen food even though this depleted their own stores.
The colonists gratefully responded by sharing the few deer that they were able to catch on their own as well as tools and skills they had brought from England.
More and more, the two very different peoples turned to one another, until at last, merging seemed the only logical thing to do.
.
"What do you mean, I'm not allowed to leave?" Sputtered John White. "I've got Grenville and eight ships loaded with food and supplies ready to sail tomorrow! My God, man. We know she's the Slayer. Dee's confirmed it--you know what's at stake! She has to have supervision!"
The usually unflappable Sir Walter Raleigh looked as pained as White had ever seen him. "No one knows better than I, John. But I can't go against the Privy Council and Her Majesty. If they want to confiscate your vessels for use against the Spanish Armada, there's nothing any of us can do."
"But... She's the Slayer, Walter! And my granddaughter..."
Raleigh put a sympathetic hand on the man he had chosen to be governor of his newest colonization attempt. "Take heart, John. This war can't last forever."
But to the anguish of John White, a father who had left behind a daughter and a granddaughter and a Watcher who had, need damned, forsaken his Slayer, the war did indeed seem to last forever.
If it had not been for the kindness of Manteo and the Croatoans, they would have died during that bitter winter. But Manteo and the sharp-eyed medicine man named Okisko, whom Manteo called "the flyer" and who wore a flattened woodpecker on his head and the head of a fox on his breechclout, kept bringing the hungry Englishmen food even though this depleted their own stores.
The colonists gratefully responded by sharing the few deer that they were able to catch on their own as well as tools and skills they had brought from England.
More and more, the two very different peoples turned to one another, until at last, merging seemed the only logical thing to do.
.
"What do you mean, I'm not allowed to leave?" Sputtered John White. "I've got Grenville and eight ships loaded with food and supplies ready to sail tomorrow! My God, man. We know she's the Slayer. Dee's confirmed it--you know what's at stake! She has to have supervision!"
The usually unflappable Sir Walter Raleigh looked as pained as White had ever seen him. "No one knows better than I, John. But I can't go against the Privy Council and Her Majesty. If they want to confiscate your vessels for use against the Spanish Armada, there's nothing any of us can do."
"But... She's the Slayer, Walter! And my granddaughter..."
Raleigh put a sympathetic hand on the man he had chosen to be governor of his newest colonization attempt. "Take heart, John. This war can't last forever."
But to the anguish of John White, a father who had left behind a daughter and a granddaughter and a Watcher who had, need damned, forsaken his Slayer, the war did indeed seem to last forever.