so much about keeping this man with his tracer?”
Andrea lifted her head, so her chin jutted out. Even in the near-total darkness, Jonah could see how determined she was. Her eyes glistened.
“Because,” she whispered. “Now I know who he is.”
19
Jonah let go of Andrea’s arms. He was too stunned to say or do anything else. For once, he was glad that Katherine was so rarely at a loss for words.
“Andrea, I really don’t think you do understand,” Katherine said, almost snippily. “How could you know? Who could this man possibly be, that would-”
“He’s my grandfather,” Andrea said. “John White.”
Katherine gasped.
Jonah was struggling to catch up. Andrea’s grandfather… had they somehow missed the chance to save her parents’ lives, but zoomed back instead to rescue her grandfather? No, her real grandfather-her twenty-first- century, adoptive grandfather-wouldn’t be from Virginia Dare’s lifetime. This would have to be Virginia Dare’s grandfather, the one Andrea had read so much about. The one who had captured her interest in the Virginia Dare story in the first place.
I think it was because of the grandfather coming back, Andrea had said. How hard he tried to get back to his family, and how many times he failed, and then when he finally made it to Roanoke…
Jonah gasped now too, only a little after Katherine.
“How can you tell it’s him?” he asked.
“He keeps talking about Eleanor, which was his daughter’s name-my… mother’s name. My birth mother’s, I mean.” Andrea sounded defensive.
“I bet a lot of women were named Eleanor back then,” Katherine said.
“The other names he said were people at Roanoke too-Fernandez, Lane, George Howe… And what he was saying about a battle with Manteo’s people? That was this really stupid sneak attack the Roanoke colonists made on an Indian village. They figured out in the middle of it that they’d attacked their own friends,” Andrea said.
“John White wouldn’t have been the only colonist in that battle,” Jonah pointed out, proud that he could come up with something logical.
“But John White was the only colonist who left Roanoke to sail back to England to talk to Sir Walter Raleigh to get supplies,” Andrea said. “He didn’t want to. The other colonists had to beg him. They told him he was their only chance.”
“And he was talking about a baby,” Katherine said thoughtfully. “That would be…”
“Virginia Dare,” Andrea said. She dropped her voice to a whisper. “Me.”
She gently patted the man’s shoulder again, and it was almost as if she was claiming him, agreeing to be his granddaughter. Jonah blinked, trying to see better in the nearly nonexistent light. He knew something important had just happened. Did Andrea want to be Virginia Dare now? Was this something else that Andrea’s mystery man had manipulated her toward?
When we got back to 1483, Chip and Alex wanted to be Edward V and Prince Richard, too, Jonah remembered. But that was after we found their tracers.
Andrea might have found her grandfather, but they still didn’t have a clue where her tracer was. Jonah glanced across the hut to the glowing tracer boys, sprawled out flat again, looking soundly asleep. Those tracers were even more proof that time and history were out of whack.
“I thought you said the grandfather didn’t find anybody when he came back to Roanoke,” Jonah said accusingly. “Just the word Croatoan carved into wood. Not two Indian boys.” He gestured toward the tracers. “Er-two boys dressed like Indians.”
“Something must have changed,” Andrea said. “Even without us interfering. Or maybe the historical accounts are wrong?”
She looked down at the man-John White?-who had settled back into a peaceful sleep again. He was even smiling slightly, and it seemed as though he was responding to Andrea’s voice. As if he knew her. But how could that be? Sure, he’d seen her as a baby, but not after that-not in any version of history-until she and Jonah had fished the man out of the waves.
Jonah shook his head. Really, history was complicated enough without there being multiple versions.
“What was supposed to happen when John White came back to Roanoke?” Jonah asked. “In the accounts you read?”
“It was three years before he made it back,” Andrea said. “That wasn’t just because of the Spanish Armada-he had all sorts of bad luck. It was like nobody cared about Roanoke but him. He was on one ship that was attacked by pirates, and he got cut up in a sword fight. And then, when he finally found a ship that would take him to Roanoke, he wanted to bring a bunch of new colonists with him, but the captain wouldn’t let him.”
“Why not?” Jonah asked.
“The captain didn’t want all those extra people taking up space on his ship. He was hoping to make a fortune privateering, and he wanted the room for all his treasures.” Andrea’s voice was bitter, as if the ship’s captain had personally offended her.
“What’s privateering?” Katherine asked.
Jonah was glad that she’d asked the question, that she was the one who looked dumb.
“The man-Mr. White?-didn’t he say something about privateering?” Jonah asked.
“Governor White,” Andrea corrected. “He was governor of the Roanoke Colony. Though”-she grinned, seeming almost cheerful now,-”the colony was just a hundred and sixteen people, so it’s not that big a deal.”
“But, privateering…,” Katherine reminded her.
“Oh, yeah.” Andrea shrugged. “It was like being a pirate, only legal. English ships would go out and attack Spanish ships and steal all their treasure. And then they’d just pay a certain percentage to the English government, like taxes, and everyone thought it was okay. It was patriotic.”
“That’s crazy!” Jonah said.
“Yeah, I bet there weren’t any Boy Scouts involved in that,” Katherine said.
“Well, there wouldn’t be, because Boy Scouts weren’t founded until…” Jonah realized that Katherine was teasing him. And he’d fallen for it. He cleared his throat. Maybe if he pretended he hadn’t said anything, nobody else would notice. “Why didn’t Mr.-er-Governor White get on a ship that wasn’t doing that privateering stuff?”
Andrea tilted her head to the side, considering this.
“I think, back then, pretty much all the English ships going to America were privateering,” Andrea said. “One of the reasons the English wanted the Roanoke Colony in the first place was so they could stash stolen treasures there, and hide from the Spanish, and get food and water.”
“They never told us that in school!” Katherine protested.
“Yeah, well, it doesn’t sound very noble,” Andrea said. “Who wants to hear that your ancestors were a bunch of thieves?”
Jonah kind of did. He might have remembered the Roanoke Colony better if Mrs. Rorshas had talked about pirates and stolen treasure.
Katherine looked down at the sleeping man.
“But this guy wasn’t bringing a bunch of treasure with him to Roanoke,” she said. “He was alone in a rowboat.”
“He wasn’t supposed to be,” Andrea said grimly, her voice low. “It was supposed to be several men who rowed from their ship to Roanoke Island. And then after they saw the word Croatoan, Governor White wanted to go on to Croatoan Island and look for the colonists there. But this horrible storm blew up-a hurricane, I think-and caused lots of problems. So they had to leave. And that was it. Nobody ever looked for the colonists on Croatoan Island.”
Andrea was practically whispering by the end of her story. She was probably just trying to keep from disturbing her grandfather, but the effect was creepy. Jonah shivered, almost as if he was one of the colonists abandoned on the opposite side of an ocean from everyone he knew.
