Arnold Archard stirred his frumenty with total absence of thought. The thick porridge of cracked grain and milk held no appeal beyond its ability to fill a man's stomach. The staple — a peasant staple — was just one of many changes that he'd yet to embrace in the Vespucci's New World.

“More honey,” he mumbled, laboring another spoonful toward his mouth.

His wife, Joyce, looked up absently from peeling an onion. “What was that, dear?”

Archard merely shook his head dismissively and swallowed, but one of their guests filled in a response.

“He said we need more honey."

Archard redirected his frown from the bowl to the man opposite him at the table.

Payne. The brawny carpenter was seated between two other men, Tayler and Bishop. All three were daily visitors at sunup, assembling at the Archard's thatch and rough-plank cottage to break their fast with a bowl of Joyce's frumenty. Sometimes she served it with eggs or foraged nuts, sometimes with honey.

Each were possibilities that hinged on trade with the nearby Indian tribe more than he would have liked. Since landing at Roanoke, Archard had worked harder than he ever had in his life — yet he had never been forced to make due with so little. Even his lovely Joyce had to shoulder the burden of feeding a small army of men rather than just her husband and son.

Such was the way of colony life. If you had a wife, your household fed the men who didn't. Unfortunately, you didn't always care for the men who relied on your hospitality for meals.

“I mean no offense,” continued Payne, “but we all grow tired of porridge. At least when the blasted natives brought honey it carried some flavor.”

“You're welcome to break your fast at the Powell house, Henry Payne,” said Joyce flatly. “I hear they have honey. Pots of it, just waiting for you.”

Payne chuckled through his untrimmed beard, “if there's honey in the Powell house, I say it isn't in the crockery.” He leaned over the table toward his host, “It's betwixt Wenefrid Powell's . . .”

“That's quite alright,” Archard cut in. “There's no need to continue on that line.”

Payne threw up his hands, but the smile never left his face. Likely it was spurred on by the chortling halfwits on either side of him.

“Apologies all around, Archards!” said Payne. “I fear the rough land has drained all the civility from me. Forgive me, that I might continue to dine with you, my dearest friend.”

“Not up to me,” said Arnold, taking another bite.

“My lovely Lady Archard? What say you? Am I to be forgiven for my savage tongue?”

Arnold finished his bowl and stood. The exchange unfolding before him was nothing but false humility and a dullard's sour attempt at humor. Such occurrences had become a weekly event with Payne, and Arnold had long ago chosen to ignore them.

“Finish your meal and get to work, Henry,” said Joyce. “And I'll beg you not to speak of your 'savage tongue' in my presence. Such a combination of words is beyond offensive when applied to your likeness.”

Payne grunted a final apology, and the men seated at his flanks split with laughter. Even Arnold couldn't stifle a laugh of his own before shooting Joyce a wink. His wife bore precision of wit that any surgeon would trade a fortune to possess in his hands. Only one of the many reasons he'd been honored to take her for his own in London.

Now, she was blushing, Joyce. Not because of the banter, he knew, but because he'd acknowledged her jape so openly in front of the other men. He smiled at the endearing effect of her red cheeks, then stepped over to deliver the finishing blow to her flagging comportment.

Stolen story; please report.

When he leaned in and kissed her lips, her face turned to fire and, giggling, she raised her half-peeled onion like a weapon.

Payne whooped and banged his fist on the table as if he'd just watched a man unhorsed in the lists. Joyce was an Englishwoman — a hard woman, as most of those who bore themselves to the colony life had to be — so Archard knew the cottage around them would crumble long before she would. As such, courtly swooning was out of the question for her.

But she'd come bloody close this time.

Archard felt an unseemly twinge for giving the likes of Payne such a show, but he still grinned like a boy when he took his wife's hand, squeezed it, and turned to leave his home to face the day's labor.

Just as he reached the threshold, his son stepped through with a good deal of wood chips and bark on his shirt. They went well with the dead twigs and shriveled leaves that managed to find purchase in his curly, brown hair.

“Morning, da,” he said, stopping to comb the wilderness from his hair with his fingers.

“Got the day's firewood?” Archard asked.

“Aye,” his son replied. Then his eyes went alight. “John Prat almost got bit by a nasty creature!”

Arnold smiled, kneeling to his son's level. “Is that right? What did this creature look like?”

Young Tom Archard looked thoughtful for a moment, then snapped back to a state of pure excitement.

“Like a spider with a tail and crab claws, da! I only saw it for a second, though. It ran fast!”

“Ah, sounds like a scorpion. You watch yourself around the woodpiles, hear me? If there's a nest of them they like to squat in the woodpiles.”

“What happens if it bites you?”

“They don't bite. They sting. And I've only seen a few of them on ships that came to England from Africa. But I hear there's as many different scorpions as there are spiders, and some of them can sting you flat-out dead.”

Tom looked less excited, but the boyish patina of invincibility kept his face flat.

“Aye, pa. I won't get stung.”

The elder Archard smiled and stood. He might be more inclined to correct the boy's cavalier ways if he'd ever learned to tame his own.

“Speaking of being careful, young Master Archard,” Joyce cut in, “what have I told you about straying off so far from the palisades?”

Young Master Archard. A moniker his wife used when she wanted to imply that their son was acting too much like his father. In her eyes, that meant careless and willful. His son was about to retort — a denial, no doubt — but Arnold cut him short and pulled him outside by the arm.

“Handled!” he shouted back to his wife as they went.

After leading the boy around the corner of the cottage, he stood him against the wall.

“You weren't about to offer up lies to your mother, I pray?”

“No, da.” The boy already wore a shamed look. The excitement had waned, for certain.

“Good, I won't have you lying, you hear me?”

Tom nodded.

“Have you been wandering off?”

“No . . .not wandering! Yesterday, I went down the west trail to find robin's eggs. John Prat saw 'em flying around that way and I wanted to bring the eggs for ma to cook.”

Arnold sighed.

Times were hard in the colony. The island didn't yield much game, and trade with the natives on the mainland had been tapering down for months. If not for the ship that had arrived three months back with salt and meat and barley, the colony of Roanoke would likely be falling back on long pork and slow death — neither option favorable to a reasonable man.

Such made it difficult to punish a boy, nearly a man grown, for going out in search of food.

“Look, son,” he said, again kneeling to face the boy at his height, “I'm proud of you for wanting to bring food to our table. You're becoming a man, and that's what a man does. But your mother isn't keen on you running into trouble out there.”

“But . . .”

“Listen! I know there hasn't been a hostile native on the island since the one what killed George Howe. Years, it's been. And there isn't enough game for wolves or bears. But think about that scorpion, son. It doesn't take much to kill a man, to tell it true. Not out here in the unknown.”

The boy nodded, but his eyes narrowed. Clearly, he was fighting a powerful urge to sulk.

“Don't lie to your mother. Don't wander off. Hear me?”

“Aye.”

“If I find you lying or sneaking off, I'll have you chopping wood until you're my age, you hear? You know how long that is?”

“Forever.”

Arnold grinned, “that's right. But you mind me, stay true, and next time I go afield to hunt, I'll bring you with me.”

The boy lit up again, smiling just as quickly as if another scorpion had crawled right in front of him.

“Now get along with your work. I'm off to mine.”

Arnold clapped his son on the back and moved on. If Tom was as much like him as Joyce implied, the boy wouldn't be getting into any more trouble. Never, with a chance to hunt on offer.