1609, Winter of the Dead: A Novel of the Founding of Jamestown Read Free

owner, Nat had lived on the streets and had slept in various stables and barns until, nearly a year later, he was taken in by a street peddler who sold fish from a rattly pushcart. Nat had helped the man catch and hawk his goods, and the man had given Nat food and shelter in the man’s shack. He’d also given Nat something most street boys would never have. He’d taught Nat to read and write.
    The peddler, a large and cheerful man called Boonie, had been as poor as any beggar, but the man had a love for literature, and had kept a tattered but beloved collection of books in a little chest. From these, Nat had learned to read, and on paper scrounged by Boonie Nat had learned to write. It seemed as if only the rich had paper, ink, and quills, but somehow Boonie would bring these things home and the two of them would write. Nat was certain the man had stolen the paper and ink, but it didn’t matter. He had a skill that the gentlemen had, and it would serve him someday. But he had never told anyone, not even Richard. Some secrets were best kept close.
    Nat was nine when Boonie had died from a mule kick to the head, and Nat had lived alone ever since. He had formed partnerships with other street boys, taking what food and clothing and bits of coal they could in order to survive. But the partnerships had come and gone. Some of the boys had been caught at their thievery; others had stolen from Nathaniel and run away. Some of the boys had died. Not long after Nat’s eleventh birthday, he’d met Richard. The two worked as a team in snatching vegetables from street-side stands or lifting valuables from rich women’s baskets, but Nat didn’t consider Richard a friend.
    Nat rolled over onto his elbows and took the ink and pen back from under his mattress. Laying the pebbles aside, he smoothed the paper as best he could on the tiny floor space by his mattress, squinted in the murky light, and wrote,
    It is a good thing not to have friends. They can betray you. They can die. A man alone has the most power. A man alone shares with no one, and is the better for it. A man alone is truly a man.
    And at last, with the rhythmic rocking of the ship, Nathaniel let sleep take him away for a little while.

3
    March 13, 1607
    N AT AND R ICHARD stood on the main deck in the bright sun and cool breeze, hurling rats and mice over the rail into the ocean waves. There had been seven buckets full of the vermin, some caught among the barrels and the gentlemen’s pallets on the ’tween deck, others on the main deck and in the cook’s small brick galley. One particularly large and hairy rat had bedded down with the overweight and haughty man Edward Brookes, and the man had shrieked like a woman until Nat had clubbed the rodent with a poker.
    As of yet, Richard and Nat hadn’t had to go down through the square hatch in the floor of the ’tween deck into the lightless hold and catch rats down there. So far, only the sailors had swung down on their ropes to feed the animals and to work the pumps. The ’tween deck was smelly indeed, with the sweat and expensive perfumes worn by the gentlemen, but the fumes that drifted up from the hold were far worse. Who knew what kinds of creatures made their home down there among the waters of the bilge? And Nathaniel knew that Richard was claustrophobic, especially in unfamiliar, unlit places. It had taken the boy a few weeks to lose his discomfort on the ’tween deck.
    Catching and dumping rats was preferable to other chores the two boys were given. It was much more fun to collect the animals and play at who could toss one farther than it was to clean spilled urine or to swab down vomit.
    â€œLook!” Nat said to Richard, nudging him on the arm as the rat he’d tossed arched and dropped into the water a good thirty feet from the ship. “Aha! Quite a distance old ratty flew there! I’m winning.”
    â€œMy last one was at least that far,”