Game of Bones by Carolyn Haines

Author:Carolyn Haines
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

18

In the kitchen I set up the coffeepot in record time. When it was brewing away, I got the thermos from beneath the sink and rinsed it out.

“History is tricky, fair lady. Facts and truth are distorted.”

Although I’d become accustomed, most of the time, to Jitty’s theatrical appearances—and vanishings—I still jumped. When I faced her, I saw a handsome Native woman in what looked like Victorian garb. The frilled collar circled her neck like some kind of mini tutu. Her hair was piled high and topped with a clever little black hat. I had no idea who this woman was, though, based on her skin and bone structure, I knew she was of Native heritage.

“Rebecca Rolfe,” she said as she dropped a curtsey.

“Sarah Booth Delaney.” I could have smacked myself in the forehead. Of course she knew who I was. She was in my home.

“May I consider you an ally?” she asked.

I saw then the loneliness and longing in her face. She was not old, but circumstances had aged her. “Of course.”

“You don’t know my name, but you know my story. At least you know a part of it.”

My memory banks were drawing a big zero. I didn’t know this woman. All I knew was that she came from a time when women were forced to wear awful clothing. I could imagine the corset that was squeezing the air from her lungs. “Could you refresh me?”

She smiled. “When the Pilgrims came to my country, I befriended a young Captain John Smith. It’s said I prevented Powhatan, a great chief and my father, from killing the captain.”

I knew her then—or I knew bits about her past history. Pocahontas, known to be an Indian princess who put herself between John Smith’s head and Powhatan’s tomahawk.

“Yes, that’s the legend.” She’d read my thoughts as Jitty could so easily do. She smiled and the years fell away. “It makes a good story, doesn’t it?”

“I loved the story of Pocahontas. I wanted to be her when I was a young girl.”

“The brave young woman who risked all for an English captive.”

I nodded. “For the man she loved.”

The smile slipped away. “Perhaps to my people I was a traitor.”

Those words stopped me in my tracks. The beautiful fantasy crumbled to dust. I’d been so indoctrinated into the history of the white man—and how all events were told from that perspective—that I hadn’t even considered the tragic consequences of the Native American’s friendliness to the first white invaders. I swallowed hard. “Why are you dressed like that? Like an Englishwoman?”

“I died in England. After I was taken prisoner and converted to Christianity, my name was changed to Rebecca. I was married to a man, John Rolfe, a pious farmer who meant to save my soul from savagery.”

“Did it work?” I had to ask, though I knew it was probably not polite.

“The legends never say, do they?”

I hadn’t missed the phrasing of her words “I was married.” A far different statement from “I married.” The first implied that she was entered into a marriage, perhaps not of her own will.

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