Two men and eight children were all that remained of the colonists of Roanoke. These few had no trouble surviving in the aftermath of Shaberdge's assault. Enough food and beer and shelter had escaped the chaos to support many times their number.
The night of the attack didn't end until hours after Doc killed the vile man Shaberdge with a shard of debris from a cottage's frame. Arnold and Doc worked themselves to exhaustion drawing water from the well to extinguish the fires. Once the flames were taken care of and the gates secured, they slept for a few hours, men and children sharing the cool safety of the chillhouse.
In the late morning sun, Arnold found his wife, Joyce, dead near their former home. He buried her thirty-three paces from the western gate, in the shade of an elm tree. They same was done for the parents of the older surviving children, the ones which could be identified as such (which amounted to three additional graves.)
Doc conducted a service over these graves beyond the stockade walls, wherein all of the survivors gathered to pay their final respects. Thomas, Arnold's son, laid a wreath of white flowers on the stones marking the graves. The boy didn't cry.
The men spent the following days building a pyre and collecting the rest of the bodies. A ship was coming, Arnold knew this much because Doc told him he'd summoned one days ago, and they would have many more able hands to make quicker work of the grim task. But tending to the dead was something to do, and something that needed done.
The ship arrived four days later, having sailed tirelessly from a port in the Caribbean. Doc wasn't inclined to reveal the vessel's port of the origin any more than he would reveal his means for calling it to Roanoke.
When the ship's skiff rowed to shore, Doc flashed his signet ring (he wore it on a thong around his neck rather than on his finger) to the crewman at the bow. The crewman acknowledged it as readily as he would customs forms or a purse of gold coins. The entirety of Roanoke's survivors were rowed to the ship in a single boat with four men bending at the oars.
It wasn't long before these ten survivors climbed a rope ladder to arrive on deck and met with the ship's captain. Arnold noticed that he wore the same ring as Doc's – also the same as the dead Mr. Shaberdge's.
This was not a ship of Queen Elizabeth's armada, Arnold surmised. No matter that it flew the standards of England, the circumstances allowed him only one conclusion: that the ship was property of Doc's "Order."
After shaking hands with Captain Kimmey, Arnold stood fast with the children while Doc made the remaining arrangements.
"If you would, Captain," said Doc, "have your men disassemble the homes and fortifications. Make the area look clean and orderly. We've done a good deal in regards to the bodies, but we can't have any sign of confrontation left behind."
"Doc," Arnold cut in. "Before John White left three years ago, he told us to carve a Maltese cross on a tree if we were forced to leave."
"Very good to know," Doc smiled. "What's the nearest island with a friendly population?"
YOU ARE READING
Roanoke: The Price of Power
Mystery / ThrillerBefore the Roanoke colony became lost, it was found . . . by a man of dark ritual and even darker purpose. It's 1589 and something is very wrong in the colony of Roanoke. When former magistrate's investigator Arnold Archard is asked by assistant go...
