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I'm scared. Make him stop!
"I won't do anything bad. I promise."
Reluctantly Sachs fished the key from her pocket and undid the cuffs.
The Weapemeoc Indians, native to what is now North Carolina, were, linguistically, part of the Algonquin nation and were related to the Powhatans, the Chowans and the Pamlico tribes in the Mid-Atlantic portion of the United States.
They were excellent farmers and were envied among their fellow Native Americans for their fishing prowess. They were peaceful to an extreme and had little interest in arms. Three hundred years ago the British scientist Thomas Harriot wrote, "Those weapons that they have, are onlie bowes made of Witch hazle, and arrows of reeds; neither have they anything to defend themselves but targets made of barcks; and some armours made of sticks wickered together with thread."
It took British colonists to turn these people militant and they did so quite efficiently by, simultaneously, threatening them with God's wrath if they didn't convert immediately to Christianity, decimating the population by importing influenza and smallpox, demanding food and shelter they were too lazy to provide for themselves and murdering one of the tribe's favorite chiefs, Wingina, who, the colonists were convinced, erroneously, as it happened, was plotting an attack on the British settlements.
To the colonists' indignant surprise, rather than accepting the Lord Jesus Christ into their hearts, the Indians declared allegiance to their own deities--spirits called Manitous--and then war against the British, the opening action of which (according to history as writ by young Mary Beth McConnell) was the assault on the Lost Colonists at Roanoke Island.
After the settlers fled, the tribe--anticipating British reinforcements--took a new look at weaponry and began to use copper, which had been used only for decoration, in making arms. Metal arrowheads were much sharper than flint and easier to make. However, unlike in the movies, an arrow fired by an unpulleyed bow usually won't penetrate very far into the skin and is rarely fatal. To finish off his wounded adversary the Weapemeoc warrior would apply the coup de grace--a blow to the head with a club called, appropriately, a "coup stick," which the tribe became very talented in making.
A coup stick is nothing more than a large, rounded rock bound into the split end of a stick and lashed into place with a leather thong. It's a very efficient weapon, and the one that Mary Beth McConnell was now making, based on her knowledge of Native American archaeology, was surely as deadly as the ones that--in her theory--had crushed the skulls and snapped the spines of the Roanoke settlers as they fought their last battle on the shores of the Paquenoke at what was now called Black-water Landing.
She'd made hers out of two curved support rods from the old dinner table chair in the cabin. The rock was the one that Tom, the Missionary's friend, had flung at her. She'd mounted it in between the two rods and bound it with long strips of denim torn from her shirttail. The weapon was heavy--six or seven pounds--but it wasn't too heavy for Mary Beth, who regularly lifted thirty-and forty-pound rocks at archaeological digs.
She now rose from the bed and swung the weapon several times, pleased with the power the club gave her. A skittish sound registered in her hearing--the insects in the jars. It made her think of Garrett's disgusting habit of snapping his fingernails together. She shivered in rage and lifted the coup stick to bring it down on the jar closest to her.
But then she paused. She hated the insects, yes, but her anger wasn't really directed at them. It was Garrett she was furious with. She left the jars alone and walked to the door then slammed the stick into it several times--near the lock. The door didn't budge. Well, she hadn't expected it to. But the important thing was that she'd tied the rock to the head of the club very firmly. It hadn't slipped.
Of course if the Missionary and Tom returned with a gun, the club wouldn't do much good against them. But she decided that if they got inside she'd keep the stick hidden behind her and the first one who touched her would get a broken skull. The other might kill her but she'd take one of them with her. (She imagined that this was how Virginia Dare had died.) Mary Beth sat down and looked out the window, at the low sun on the line of trees where she'd first seen the Missionary.
What was the feeling coursing through her? Fear, she supposed.
But then she decided that it wasn't fear at all. It was impatience. She wanted her enemies to return.
Mary Beth lifted the coup stick into her lap.
Get yourself ready, Tom had told her.
Well, that she had.
"There's a boat."
Lucy leaned forward through the leaves of a pungent bay tree on the shore near the Hobeth Bridge. Her hand was on her weapon.
"Where?" she asked Jesse Corn.
"There." Pointing upstream.
She could vaguely see a slight darkness on the water, a half mile away. Moving in the current.
"What do you mean, boat?" she asked. "I don't see--"
"No, look. It's upside down."
"I can hardly see it," she said. "You've got good eyes."
"Is it them?" Trey asked.
"What happened? Did it capsize?"
But Jesse Corn said, "Naw, they're underneath it."
Lucy squinted. "How do you know?"
