Martha Peake

by Patrick Mcgrath

  “Who was it?” I whispered; for I knew the slinking Percy to be incapable of such a footfall; and at that very moment a coal fell in the fire—a heap of sparks leaped up—and the clock in the hallway struck three.

  “It was nobody,” said my uncle, when the chimes died away, still sitting up rigid, his large batlike ears perceptibly straining to catch every last crumb of sound to be had in this mausoleum of a house.

  “Nobody?” said I.

  He turned to me then.

  “Nobody!” he cried hoarsely. “There is nobody here, do you understand me, Ambrose?”

  “Then what—”

  But I was not allowed to finish the question. He silenced me with a ferocious glare, a lifting of the head and a great flashing of the eye, there in the gloom, with but a coal fire and a few candles burning. Later, in my room, I asked myself what this could mean, and his “Nobody!” rang still in my head with all the fierce conviction he had invested in the word; and I asked myself, did he mean it? Could that footfall have been caused by “nobody”? Who then was this “nobody” who tramped the corridors of Drogo Hall at the dead of night, for tramp he did—I heard him with my own ears.

  Thus did it begin. There was, however, so much else to occupy my mind in the hours and days that followed—I mean of course the story of Martha Peake—that I gave little further thought to the nobody who had so disturbed my uncle. Until, that is, the next time I heard him.

  I was lying abed, sweating freely, convulsed with fever and barely able to lift a hand to my wine glass. Again it was very late at night, and my uncle had left me only a short time before. I could not sleep, for the medicines he prescribed me, which I drank without inquiring as to what they were, had the unfortunate effect of stimulating my mind, even as they brought on the sweating that he assured me was essential to rid my body of the toxins with which I had been infected on the marsh. So there I lay, turning my head from side to side as the perspiration streamed from my pores and soaked through the bedsheets and into the blankets. My mind wandered freely, throwing up vivid pictures of Martha in flight from her mad father—Martha taking ship for America—Martha’s first glimpse of New Morrock, from the top of the cliff they called Black Brock—when all at once my reverie was broken by that same tramping footfall I had heard two nights before.

  I ceased my restless turning in the bed. Martha Peake vanished from my mind. My senses were at once concentrated on the sound, for this time it issued not from some distant corridor, no, it was far closer than that, by God it was very close indeed, there was somebody outside my door! I lay there in a terror, the sweat now coming off me in sheets, and I doubted I had the strength to rise from my bed, and cross the room—pistol in hand!—to discover once and for all who it was that moved about the house by night, who this nobody was who had plainly alarmed my uncle as much as he now did me! I flung a hand out and groped for the drawer in the bedside table, but succeeded only in knocking over my wine glass—it shattered on the floorboards—then all was silent once more.

  What did this mean? Had he fled, whoever, or whatever, he was? Or did he even now lurk outside my door, the shattering glass having alerted him to my presence here within? I was seized with desperation, and with desperation came strength, strength I did not know I possessed. I struggled out of my soaking bed, I opened the drawer—a single candle had been left burning, and a few dim embers still glowed in the fireplace—and with trembling fingers I unlocked the walnut box and took from it my pistol. With no small difficulty I then primed and loaded the weapon—cocked it—and thus armed, in my nightshirt, fevered, trembling and terrified, I advanced to the door of my bedroom—paused a second, listening—heard nothing—flung open the door, and stepped into the passage, ready to fire!

  Nobody was there. A window some way down the passage admitted a shaft of moonlight, and I was able to confirm that in the gray gloom no lurking figure waited to fall on me and do me harm. I advanced a few steps along the passage to be certain; it was deserted—

  And then—a noise—a door creaked slowly open at the far end of the passage! My heart was pealing like a dozen churchbells. I lifted the pistol, my finger trembling on the trigger—the pistol shook wildly as I raised it as high as my shoulder—I gripped my wrist in a vain attempt to still the tremor—

  Then coming through the door, a candlestick held aloft, and followed a moment later by Percy—it was my uncle. With some relief I lowered the pistol.

  “Dear boy,” he cried, “whatever are you doing? Back to bed at once!”

  “He was here!” I cried. “He was outside my door!”

  With Percy close behind him my uncle came shuffling along the passage. He wore a dressing gown that seemed to have been cut from an old carpet, or a set of curtains, on his feet his Turkish slippers, and the red nightcap askew on his skull. I cried out wildly once more that I had heard a man outside my door, but no, no, there is nobody here but us; and without further ado he shepherded me back to bed, having taken my pistol from me and replaced it in the drawer by my bed. He laid a hand on my febrile brow, while Percy mixed a sleeping draught. I was not disturbed again.

  The next morning I was much recovered, the events of the night having seemingly provoked the fever to its crisis. I was permitted to get up for a few hours in the late afternoon, and as soon as I was left alone in my room I looked to see if my pistol had been confiscated. It had not.

  I joined my uncle in his study that evening. He was vague, he seemed distracted, and I assumed he was troubled, as I was, at these recent occurrences in the night. Nonetheless I began at once to question him about Martha, and I remember his truculent insistence that he was too tired for this American adventure, as he called it. So I desisted, somewhat offended by the brusqueness of his manner toward me.

  After several minutes of uneasy silence, himself making curious sucking noises with his mouth, while I glared frowning at the fire, he at last looked up and resumed talking as though no interruption had occurred. But he did not talk about Martha, his mind was busy, rather, with the fate of her father; for while he had had no involvement in Martha’s life after arranging her passage to America, he had played a large part in Harry’s last days, instrumental as he was in the furthering of Lord Drogo’s black scheme; and uneasy slept the conscience of that close and secretive man, so uneasy, in fact, that he was haunted by what he had done—and here it came to me with a clap of thunder, and a dazzling jag of light—this was the source and origin of the mysterious footfall in the night: deep in the ancient gloom of Drogo Hall a restless spirit, with work unfinished, was stirring to life! But if so—what sort of spirit—and what sort of work?

  This came as no small shock, I must tell you. What to do now? I sat forward in my chair as my mind raced forward, a flurry of ideas, questions, possibilities tumbling into the light, but nothing certain, I must know more, I must wait and be sure. I decided to let my uncle go forward with Harry’s story before I challenged him. I decided to show him nothing of what I now knew, or suspected I knew. And so we went forward; that is, he rambled, often erratically, over the matter at hand, with many a digression and, as always, a frequent application to the Hollands-and-water, while I, later, in my room, gave literary flesh to what I had heard, bringing to bear upon his few sticks of ill-remembered fact the full powers of imagination—intuition—sympathy—and art—that as a sometime poet I possessed in no small measure. Thus did his sticks come to life; thus did they flower.

  22

  So what of Harry, what of that poor lost fellow? This I have thought about a good deal, what happened to Harry Peake after Martha left Drogo Hall, and I have not been helped by my uncle, who I fear did not steer me straight in this. I suspect that when Martha fled Drogo Hall, Harry did indeed watch the black carriage cross the marsh in the moonlight, but made no attempt to intercept it. I believe he remained in the graveyard all that night, and I cannot imagine what he suffered. He did not commit suicide, William has assured me of this and I am inclined, at least on this point, to
take him at his word. If he did not commit suicide then he must have gone on, but newly burdened, with a fresh load of guilt to carry on his bent spine, and it is a measure of the man’s spirit that he could go on, that life, for all the bitter fruit he had tasted, seemed still the better thing—because of Martha? Because while she lived, he would love her, he must love her? Perhaps he would never see her again, but what he desired no longer mattered. It was for him only to love her, and whether or not that act of love, sustained as long as he drew breath, did any good—this he could not know. This he must take on trust. What choice had he? His love might be of some use to her, wherever she was, and he had not the right to deny her it, he had lost the right—and it must have cost him dear, to recognize this—to turn his face to the darkness.

  Thus I imagine the wordless currents of the spirit of the ragged madman slumped among the gravestones on the hill above Drogo Hall. Come the dawn, and the last of the gin dissipated, he knows she has gone. It is time for him to leave this place, there is nothing more for him here. I see him then, as the first light steals over the marsh, a faint figure moving through the mist, limping off toward the town, whose distant domes and steeples can be picked out now against the gray sky.

  Ah, but he is not alone, there is movement in the trees above the road, and as he tramps back to London a dark figure shadows him. It is, of course, Clyte. The little gargoyle has not been distracted by Martha’s flight, for it is not Martha he is after. The wind comes up and there is a touch of ice in it this morning, and Harry Peake clutches his thin coat about him. He is sober now, and he feels the cold. Winter is coming on.

  Winter was coming on in Cape Morrock too, and Martha would have felt it, as she adapted herself to her new life among the Americans, she would have felt the ice in the wind, and seen a growing fury in the restless sea. That coast had given many of its men to the sea, and in the long hours of darkness, when the winter storms battered the cape, the firesides and taverns of the town were alive with stories of those who had perished and those who had been driven mad by the sea, of whom there were more than a few in the history of New Morrock. Martha listened, and remembered how her father used to talk to her about Cornwall, the men he had known there, their own stories.

  I remember my uncle puffing away at his pipe one night in Drogo Hall, his eyes dim and far away, and I knew he was reliving old arguments, he was back in the seventeen-seventies, for he had been talking about the Americans and, to my astonishment, with some sympathy. I remember how he shook his head, more with sadness, I believe, than anger, when I asked him whether the king had been wrong in his actions toward the colonies; and I then remarked that Martha surely shared his opinion.

  At the mention of her name the old man winced, he distinctly winced; and I thought, what raw thing have I fingered here?

  Oh, she was for the American cause, he said, after a moment or two, gruff now, sour again; was she not her father’s daughter?

  But it was not only Harry who spoke to her of these matters, I said. There was her uncle, and others, too—?

  Here he gazed at me through narrowed eyes. He knew what I was after. He nodded once or twice. Adam Rind, he murmured. Oh yes. Of all the proud rebels in Massachusetts, he was the one who fanned the flames of rebellion in the heart of Martha Peake.

  This was what I had suspected.

  One morning that fall, carrying buckets of steaming hot water from the kitchen to the washtubs outside, where her aunt Maddy was scrubbing sheets and linen, Martha paused and straightened her back, pressing her hands in just above her buttocks, and pushing out her belly, feeling for the secret creature in her womb; and as she stood thus, gazing out over the sea, Adam came up beside her and told her he was going down to the dock and did she want to come with him?

  Yes she did, she did indeed, so she asked her aunt and was told she could; and Sara would come too, for the two girls had made their peace now and were fast becoming the best of friends. She pulled on her boots and flung on her greatcoat and cocked hat and off they went, arm in arm, herself in the middle and a cousin on either side.

  What a dirty town it was! As they came down the hill they stepped over fish heads and rotting vegetables in which pigs and dogs rooted freely. It was a clear cold day with a strong salty breeze off the harbour, and when they reached the bottom of the hill they were among the fishermen’s houses, ramshackle structures with woodsmoke drifting from their crooked chimneys and bleached bones nailed to their doors, whales’ jaws and the like. Crab pots were piled up against the walls, also gaffs and harpoons, whose function Adam began to explain to her, till she told him sharply she came from Cornwall, she knew what a gaff was for; and indeed, all she saw that day reminded her of Port Jethro, and in her nostrils the strong rank fishy smell from the flukes where the cod were dried on the rocks nearby.

  They met people shuffling off to the dock, or leaning in the doorways of their workshops, big men with long hair and thick beards, and Adam introduced Martha to various of them, Dan Pierce and his brother Nat, who had the tavern; John van Horn, captain of Silas’ trading vessel, the Lady Ann; Ben Clapsaddle, Henry Coffin, Mr. Crow, the minister. All were friendly, in their gruff way, except the minister, who regarded her, unsmiling, from ice-blue eyes as though he were drawing back the curtains of her soul so as to take a look inside.

  Then they were on Front Street, and there was the harbour. Between the wharves were crowded a great number of fishing boats, sloops for the most part, stubby-masted vessels with two jibs flying from the bowsprit. They saw men talking in small groups on the dock, and women with pipes in their mouths stitching nets; but no boats were going out. Adam spoke with fierce indignation, his arm sweeping across the scene, saying, here are men who should be out fishing, here are seaworthy fishing boats, and here—with a large flourish at the Atlantic—fish! A multitude of fish! It is because of the British that we are idle when we should be catching fish! But Sara and Martha were in no mood for Adam’s fervour, and told him to mind his manners, they did not wish to be harangued.

  They stopped at the forge. The smith was hard at work, his fire going strong and sparks flying everywhere as he hammered like a very Vulcan. He had straightened out a twisted gun barrel for Adam, who now stood admiring the man’s handiwork, lifting the musket to his shoulder and sighting down the length of it, muttering about damned redcoats.

  Beside the forge a narrow alley snaked off between small wooden houses built close together, and the three made their way up the hill, Adam with his gun on his shoulder. Sara left them halfway up, having errands of her own to run; and Adam returned—he could not help it!—to the topic which had so inflamed him on the dock, that his friends and neighbours were prevented from going to sea and doing the work that men of Cape Morrock had done for the last hundred years!

  What is it you catch? Martha asked him.

  Cod! he cried. It was cod they caught, which they salted down in barrels and sold in the sugar islands. They came away with sugar and molasses, he said, and made rum from it—here waving a hand at a large building in the town, which Martha would later learn was his father’s distillery. And what did they do with the rum? They sold the rum in Africa, said Adam, and came away with, oh—he was vague—various goods—and here my uncle wheezed with malice—slavers, were they, he cried, these Sons of Liberty?—I ignored this troublesome interruption—which they then sold to those same plantations where they bartered their salt cod. And in this way, said Adam, men grow rich. But now your king threatens our prosperity by levying taxes which obstruct our trade and turn us into smugglers—small wonder we talk of taking up arms to assert our natural rights!

  Martha frowned as she listened to this. She had realized the first time she saw it that the cape was well-suited to the requirements of the smuggler, pocked and fissured as it was with natural harbours; so she said this to Adam now, asking him did they not know how to evade the navy, as Cornishmen knew how to evade the Excise?

  Oh, and Adam’s pride was stung by this, and soon
he was telling her how John van Horn, and Grizzel Apthorp, and Brockden Coffin, and Dan Pierce and others like them—had he himself not crewed aboard the Lady Ann many a time?—how Cape Morrock men had run the blockade again and again, how they had come through under cover of darkness, or fog, or storm, and slipped into concealed bays and coves where their cargo was swiftly unloaded, crates and barrels transferred into wagons which then, by night, were hauled to magazines and depots throughout the colony; and it was not sugar and molasses they brought in now, he told her, oh no, it was powder, and cannon, and muskets, and ball. And who do you think, he said, is the man who organizes the landing of all such contraband on the cape?

  Who?

  Silas Rind.

  This must surely have astonished Martha, to discover that her uncle pursued her father’s old occupation. She told Adam this, and the cousins then spent a happy afternoon talking about the ways of smugglers. Adam later mentioned this to his father, and such was Silas’ respect for Martha Peake, he allowed Adam to invite her to a landing planned for some nights hence, so she could tell him later what she thought—

  Tell him what she thought? Tell him what she thought?

  This, of course, was my uncle again; I was giving him my account of Martha’s quickening friendship with Adam Rind, and knowing only that she had indeed attended a landing with him, I had surmised that Silas must have wished to know her opinion of his operation.

  The old man was robust in his rejection of this conjecture. Why on earth, he said, would Silas do such a thing? Is not secrecy the first rule of the smuggler? Why reveal his secrets to this girl—a newcomer, and English withal?