Pretty Savage: Defy (The Order #2)

Prologue

Roanoke Colony

Weather-worn planks of wood turned grey and warped by humid air and the relentless sun make up the walls of the small meeting house.

The colonists had built on a low, rocky hill, one of the island’s few places where the land rose above the marsh and didn’t flood after heavy rain.

From here, the entire settlement could be seen below.

The smattering of simple cottages and low gardens.

Beyond that stood the palisade wall they’d constructed of sturdy logs driven deep into the earth with tips sharpened into points and angled outward to ward off unruly wildlife and defend the settlement from attack. It had been built to keep danger out.

But disaster had come from inside, and the wall had not been able to save them.

First the animals sickened. The chickens and the goats. The pigs. Even Mistress White’s prized milking cow had folded onto its side beside the well and had never risen again.

Then the meager crops they planted on hands and knees had failed. Roots that couldn’t grow in the wet, sandy dirt. That rotted rather than sprouted. What little survived the soil drowned beneath endless rain or withered under brutal heat.

Empty bellies made for angry men; quiet arguments became loud. Petty grievances grew into grudges that couldn’t be forgiven. Whispers passed between cottages after dark while the children slept nearby, unaware their parents had begun looking at one another like strangers.

Then came the pestilence.

Little Virginia Dare, who had only just begun to walk, burned with fever first. Jacobson soon followed.

At fifteen, he was already taller than many of the grown men, but the sickness dragged him into the grave all the same.

Like matchsticks, one lighting the next, children gave the fever to grandparents, who gave it to fathers and mothers until they ran out of fabric to make shrouds to wrap the bodies in.

Now, what started at one hundred and fifteen souls has been whittled down to four.

One man.

Three women.

They cluster together in the meeting house while a storm rages outside, wind rolls off the sound and rattles the wall, howling around the corners like it grieves with them. It slips icy fingers through cracks in the walls to caress their exposed wrists and throats.

“Sister Osborne,” Carr Ashford pleads softly with his hands outstretched. “Give her to me.”

Ruth shakes her head violently, eyes wild in the candlelight as she clutches the small body against her chest. Rainwater drips from the hem of her dress onto the floorboards in a steady patter.

“No,” she whispers. “I won’t leave her.”

Outside, thunder rolls across the thrashing bay hard enough to shake the walls.

“Please,” Ann Norwood says gently. “I know she was your child, but we must go. Once the storm passes, we leave this place or we die with it.”

Ruth’s face crumples.

The child in her arms cannot have seen more than six winters. Her skin has already begun turning waxen beneath the candlelight, lips faintly blue, curls damp with sweat from the fever that burned through the colony faster than prayer ever could.

“She was breathing this morning,” Ruth says hoarsely. “She spoke to me this morning.”

No one answers.

Because they had all said the same thing. About mothers, brothers, sons, and lovers. All cherished and all lost.

Carr bends slightly at the waist and inches closer to the grieving mother, as though approaching a wounded animal liable to bite.

“The dead cannot cross the marsh with us,” he says in a quiet voice, like the child is only sleeping and might awaken if he speaks too loudly.

The words make sense, but, as they leave his mouth, even he wonders what place logic has in a world gone mad.

Ruth rocks the child gently. “We cannot leave them alone.”

Outside the meeting house lie shallow graves already half-flooded with rainwater, the marsh threatening to swallow them whole. Some had crude wooden crosses. Others were left bare because, by the end, there had not been enough strength, or enough survivors, to fashion markers for the dead.

The colony is rotting around them, and beneath the smell of rain and seawater, death lingers in the air, a haunting reminder of all they have lost.

Carr holds out his hands, caked with dirt from graves and blistered from the shovel he used to dig them.

“You know I understand,” he says with his eyes downcast.

That quiets Ruth. It pulls her, just slightly, out of her own grief as she’s reminded that yesterday he buried his own wife, a girl just nineteen years old, with her belly swollen.

When Carr and his bride had announced the pregnancy, the entire colony had rejoiced.

This would be the first child born on this foreign soil.

They had taken it as a sign that God intended them to survive here, to put down roots in this strange wilderness and raise future generations.

Ruth remembers thinking that Carr’s wife was fortunate. To be chosen by him. The thought feels shameful now that mother and unborn child were dead and hope had followed them into the dirt.

Across the room, Tabitha Odell labors at the hearth where a fire sputters.

The wooden ladle she uses scrapes loudly along the side of the metal pot that dangles over the flames.

She’s making soup, although that seems a generous name for water mixed with whatever wilted plants she could pry from the ground.

She places the thin liquid into bowls, dividing it evenly into four, which leaves barely a thimbleful for each of them.

After a moment’s thought, she tips her own serving into Carr Ashford’s bowl.

Ann notices but does not protest. She too knows what is at stake.

Carr’s a good hunter, quick with the musket.

If any of them are to survive what comes next, it will be because he puts food in their bellies.

Ann’s always been a practical woman. A trait that faltered after putting her husband and four children into the ground, when she had lain down on top of the graves and had waited for God to take her as well, but Carr had come along then.

He had not offered platitudes or prayer. Hand under her elbow, he hauled her up out of the mud.

“There’s work to do,” he told her.

He directed her to care for the sick while the colony dwindled around them. Mixing herbs. Carrying water. Cooling burning foreheads with damp cloths.

It had given her hands purpose when her heart had none. For a while it had worked, until every patient died and the horror of it all came rushing back.

“It’s not right,” wails Ruth now as a fresh set of tears wets her cheeks. “We did everything the Almighty Lord asked of us. Braved hardships unimaginable. Why would He smite us like this? Why has He forsaken us?”

“No, Ruth.” Carr straightens. At six feet, he’s always been the tallest man in the colony, easy to spot in any crowd.

Hunger has hollowed his cheeks and narrowed his frame, but it has not taken the strength from him.

Candlelight catches along the sharp line of his jaw and the dark waves of hair that have grown too long during these grueling months.

When the colonists first staggered ashore, seasick and weak-legged, Ruth had found herself searching for him whenever the surf knocked her off balance. During storms, she looked for him among the cottages. During disputes, she watched his face before deciding what she thought herself.

She was not alone in that. Tabitha’s eyes stay fixed on him every time he speaks and when he glances her way, Ann unconsciously straightens her spine.

Not because he holds any official authority over them but because at twenty-two he is young and strong where so many others have been proven weak. Because even through the sickness and hunger and despair, he had risen from his bed every morning and continued.

In a world where nearly everyone they loved was gone, Carr Ashford remains.

“You are mistaken,” he tells them. “God has not abandoned us. He’s chosen us.”

“Chosen us?” asks Ruth. “How can that be? Everyone is dead.”

“Yes, all of the colony,” says Carr. “They came to this wilderness, just like the four of us. Tell me. Did they pray less? Labor less? Sacrifice less?”

Tabitha shakes her head.

“No.”

“No,” Carr agrees. “They were good people.” His voice hitches, grows raspy. “My wife was a good woman, better than I deserved. She would have been a good mother.”

He’s quiet for a minute, his chest heaving like he’s underwater and desperate for air. But he does not drown. He pulls himself back together and faces the three before him.

“The fever did not take the wicked. It took the weak.”

It’s a harsh condemnation of the dead, but the women do not flinch, nor do they look away.

“God has tested us and found us worthy. He’s saved our souls and our bodies so we can forge onward.

The tragedies we’ve suffered,” Carr pulls in a shuddering breath, and they know he’s thinking of her, his wife with the golden hair, “have been to prove that we,” he thumps a fist to his chest, “are the strongest of them all.”

The words take on the authority of scripture, ringing through the meeting house like a church bell.

“We were not spared by chance.”

He points toward them one by one.

“You.”

To Tabitha.

“You.”

To Ann.

“You.”

To Ruth.

“Chosen.”

The word hits with the weight of a hammer.

“We are survivors.”

Carr’s voice fills the meeting house. It rises over the shouting wind and the booms of thunder. He throws his arms out. Behind him on the wall, the cross of their church, with four arms of equal length, catches the flickering light and blazes.

Ann gasps and clutches her chest.

“We are survivors, and I have seen God’s great plan for us,” Carr says, and even Ruth stops her sobbing long enough to listen.

“What is it, Brother Carr?” asks Tabitha, her eyes wide and her mouth agape. “Tell us, what visions have you witnessed?”

The women lean forward, listening hard.

He looks at each of them in turn. “We will leave this place of sorrow and travel the land.”

“Where shall we go?” asks Tabitha.

“Wherever God takes us,” Carr says. “We will find others like us. Only the strongest. The most likely to flourish. We will gather them. Join with them, selecting carefully until we have formed the perfect community, full of the hearty and the brave, so we never have to cry these tears again.”

He raises both palms to the ceiling. Behind him, the fire lights the edges of his hair, forming a halo around his head.

Ann falls to her knees at the sight and prays.

Tabitha and Ruth follow, sinking to the floor.

Three women kneeling before a single man.

Outside, thunder shakes the island.

Carr looks upon them. “Rise,” he commands, beckoning them upward. “The world beyond these walls is chaos. Together, we shall bring order to it.”

Ruth places the child on the floor, at Carr’s feet like a sacrifice. Or an offering. Moments ago she would have clawed out the eyes of any man who tried to take her daughter from her arms.

Now she lets go.

“It is done.” She makes the sign of the cross, touching her forehead, chest, and then each shoulder. “From God’s mouth to our ear.”

All three bow their heads in prayer, seeking guidance even though they know in their hearts that their fate has been decided. They will follow Carr Ashford. Through the marsh and the mountains. Through heartbreak and to their death if he asks it.

Because he has given them something more powerful than food, than shelter.

More powerful than hope.

He has given their suffering meaning.

***

The next day they gather their few belongings and leave the dead behind. At the palisade wall they halt.

“We shall leave our mark here,” Carr tells the women. “So those who come after us will know which of us still draws breath.”

He draws the long, curved dagger from his belt.

The one he sharpened last night, while the women slept under his watchful eye.

He knows, better than them, that the way forward will be full of bloodshed.

He sets the tip to the wood and pauses. “I have never been good with the letters, but I will do my best. Tell me how you want them written. Your names.”

“I’ll begin with my own.” Carr carves two initials into the wood. “Carr Ashford.”

C A

He faces the women. “Who is next?”

“Tabitha Odell,” she says.

TO

Carr shifts the dagger lower.

Ann steps closer. “Ann Norwood.”

AN

Carr stops, staring at the letters. “There’s no more room at the end.”

“It’s okay,” Ruth says. “You can fit my name in there.” She points at a gap between his initials.

“That will fit,” Carr agrees. “Ruth Osborne.”

RO

Together they retreat and stand shoulder to shoulder, staring at the letters carved deep into the wood.

CROATOAN

After a long silence, Ann sighs. “It will do,” she says. She places her hand on Ruth’s shoulder and slowly guides her away. Tabitha follows, trailing behind the pair.

Carr is the last to leave, after a final glance toward the graveyard.

The winter rains will wash away the bodies, but he doesn’t know that. Nor does he know that the next living human won’t walk into this place for another two years, and by then, the meaning of the letters left behind will be lost to time.

He does not know that explorers will search for them, desperate for answers to the mystery of their disappearance. Scholars will write books. Generations will wonder what became of them.

But the truth is simple.

The colony had not vanished.

It followed Carr Ashford into the wilderness.

Through him. Through the women who believed in him.

Through the children born from that belief.

It would survive.

And it would spread.