Roanoke (The Keepers of the Ring) by Angela Hunt, Angela Elwell Hunt Page A

of the upper deck. The ship lifted and fell, rocked and listed, backward and forward, left and right. None stood on their feet. Even those who had been devoutly praying on their knees now lay prostrate on the floor, bodies piled upon one another like an odd assortment of rag dolls. The air was horribly thick and close, and Jocelyn threw herself on the floor next to Audrey and struggled to breathe a prayer: Father God, are you there?
    Someone tugged on her skirt, and Jocelyn looked up, expecting to find Eleanor in hysterics. But a boy crawled beside her, and in the white light of a lightning flash she recognized George Howe, the eleven-year-old son of one of her uncle ’s assistants.
    “I cry you mercy, Miss,” the boy whimpered, struggling manfully to hide his fear, “but I can ’t find my father.”
    Jocelyn looked about, but in the dim light of the hold she could see only huddled forms and the darkly wet forms of prostrate women. She turned back to the boy, about to tell him to wait until the storm had passed, but the sight of his quivering chin bade her pause. “Come, we ’ll find him together,” she said, reaching for his hand. She tried to rise , but the erratic rocking of the ship made balance impossible, so she crept forward, placing the boy’s hand on her wet skirt.
    “Don ’t lose me,” she said, yelling to be heard above the din as she crawled forward on her hands and knees. “Your father’s probably in the afterdeck—isn’t that where you sleep?”
    She thought the boy nodded, but in the darkness she couldn ’t be sure. She continued through the black hold, stumbling over bodies, trunks, tools. Her progress was further hampered by the boy’s tugging at her skirt in the uneven rhythm of his crawling. Every five or ten feet she stopped, raised her voice, and cried, “Master Howe? I have your son!” But no one called out above the voices clamoring in panic and prayer.
    For half an hour she crawled over the wet floor and searched for the boy ’s father. Amid the crack and roll of thunder and cries of honest fear, rain thrummed on the upper deck and sloshed in the ship’s belly as the vessel thrashed in the storm. Was George Howe on this deck? She prayed so, for she could not bring herself to go higher, where waves could wash her away, nor lower, where rats and roaches darted uneasily among the trunks and barrels upset by the storm.
    At one point Jocelyn slipped and fell, her head hitting a mast. She sat in dazed pain for a moment, rubbing the knot on her head, and felt again the insistent tug on her skirt. “Miss White—my father!” The pathos in George ’s voice drove her back to her hands and knees. Young George Howe needed his father, just as she needed hers, and in that frightened cry she recognized the same pain that had driven her to write letters to God. She had tried to tug on the heart of God just as George tugged now on her skirt—
    Jocelyn turned her face to the boy in the darkness and hoped he could not hear the hopeless panic in her voice. “I don ’t know where your papa is, George.” She bit her lip, fighting back tears of frustration, and suddenly a hand fell upon her shoulder.
    “Seek you Mister Howe?” Thomas Colman knelt beside her, his wet hair plastered to his face like dark silk ribbons. But his eyes, thank God, were capable and confident.
    She nodded wordlessly, hoping he wouldn’t see the fear in her eyes.
    “Wait here. I ’ll take the boy to his father.” Jocelyn nodded again and pulled her raw and splintered hands into her lap. Thomas took young George’s hand and led him across the deck, in less than a moment he had returned and knelt again by her side.
    “Master How is against the far wall,” Thomas said, yelling to be heard above the thrashing of the storm. “The boy is safe now, thanks to you.”
    “He went down too far, to the deck below this,” she tried to explain, her voice ringing above the baritone prayers rising all around her. “But the