The Jamestown Settlement’s Archaearium—the repository of artifacts from a fraught, violent, and tragic past—reminded me of a warehouse with its muted browns and grays and twinkling spotlights shining on Plexiglas display cases. It also seemed to be a place where you whispered or spoke quietly so as not to disturb what was preserved here.

“The Sea Venture exhibit is nearly at the end,” Josie murmured, confirming my suspicion of library silence.

We had gone more than halfway around the museum when Quinn stopped so abruptly that I ran into him.

We were at an exhibit called Survival. Quinn leaned forward to read the explanation inside the Plexiglas cabinet. “What the … oh, Jesus Christ.”

In front of us, the lifelike bust of a beautiful young girl with unblemished skin, full lips, and wavy golden hair partially covered by an embroidered cream-colored cap stared sightlessly into the distance.

“This,” Josie said, “is one of the more recent developments that the archeologists working here have managed to confirm along with the help of the Smithsonian. It’s … unfortunately … proof of cannibalism. Survival cannibalism.”

“Survival cannibalism,” Quinn repeated. “You mean they ate each other because they had to?”

“That’s right.”

“They ate … her?” I asked. “This girl?”

“You didn’t know about this?” Josie asked. “They call her Jane.”

I wished Josie hadn’t given her a name. “No,” I said in a faint voice, placing my hands over my stomach. “Somehow I missed it. Though I don’t know how.”

“The winter of 1609 and 1610 was called the Starving Time,” Josie said. “By the time the Sea Venture landed in Jamestown a year and a half after it was wrecked off the coast of Bermuda—in the spring of 1610—the men who arrived found only fifty people out of the entire population of Jamestown. They looked like walking skeletons.”

“How did they—the researchers—find out about the cannibalism?” Quinn asked.

“Another trash pit,” Josie said in a matter-of-fact voice. “They discovered her remains. Bone fragments. Part of her skull. She’d been hacked to death with a cleaver and then eaten. I’ll spare you the details—it’s more gruesome than you want to know; there were a lot of blows and failed attempts to crack her skull—but scientists from the Smithsonian and Jamestown archeologists were able to reconstruct her face using CT scanning and computer graphics. They were also able to determine where she came from in England and that she was approximately fourteen years old.”

“Good God,” Quinn said.

I remained mute.

“Are you sure about the cannibalism?” Quinn asked.