by Amy Brill
Hannah and her father walked without speaking until they had turned onto Federal Street.
“I’m surprised at thee, Hannah,” he said. He sounded more disappointed than angry. “I’d think thee would know better than to wander about with a stranger in the middle of the night.”
“I only went from home to the Atheneum to get a book.” She patted her father on the arm, but she’d misread his tone. He stopped in the middle of the street and folded his arms. Hannah stumbled over her words in her haste to mount a defense.
“I’m certain no harm shall come to me in his presence.”
“And thee is sure of this on what grounds, Hannah? What does thee know of this person? From whence does he come?”
“He comes from the Western Islands,” she said, mentally apologizing for not trying to pronounce the true name of the place. “But what difference does it make? He is a student. And a good student, at that. He’s very diligent, and is learning very quickly. He came with the Pearl ’s chronometer only a few weeks ago—”
“A few weeks?”
“—and he asked to be tutored in navigation so that he may advance his place,” Hannah went on. “He’s paying a good rate.”
She swallowed, shocked by how guilty she felt for something as simple as helping a man learn. The memory of the current-like connection that passed between them on the roof glinted, then disappeared.
“Advance his place.” Her father cocked his head as if he were suspicious.
“Yes.”
“Hannah.”
“What?”
“Where does thee think such a man might advance?”
“Such a man?”
“Yes. It’s a noble idea, but—”
“It isn’t my idea. ’Tis his own.” A spark of defiance burrowed into her chest.
“Regardless. I hope thee won’t be disappointed if this boatsteerer—”
“Second mate.”
“—is disappointed in his quest. Advancement is a rare thing for his race, especially in these times. Thee knows this to be true. Or is thee naïve enough to think otherwise? Or, worse, encourage an unreasonable hope?”
Their whispers shot back and forth, faster and faster.
“I cannot believe thee would take such a position!” she hissed. “Even the African school in Boston has a course in navigation. Why should he not learn it as a grown man?” Hannah wasn’t a bit surprised that her father objected to her wandering around with Isaac at night. But he seemed to be condemning the lessons themselves. She’d always considered him tolerant, even progressive, on such matters. He’d objected to the segregation of the schoolchildren as strongly as she did. Now she wondered if it was because he no longer hadanyschool-children.
“It’s not my position, Hannah, and I do not say he should not learn, here or elsewhere. Whether thee ought provide the instruction is another matter.”
“What about Captain Boston?” He was the only example of a black whaling captain Hannah could think of.
“He assumed his duties over twenty years ago, Hannah. This man will find it difficult to advance in the current climate, is all I’m saying. And how does thee know that what he claims is true?”
“We’ve known John Leary since he was in short pants, and he’s the Pearl ’s first mate. If he hired this man, I imagine there’s a good reason. But thee sounds as though he oughtn’t even try to advance. Or is thee assuming that he cannot learn?”
He softened.
“That’s not what I believe, Hannah.”
“Then I cannot understand thy point! What is thee trying to say?” With that, Hannah lost the battle to keep her voice level. His, though, remained smooth as a new sheet of copper.
“Mind thyself, is all,” he said, stepping back, snapping the cord of their conversation. “He is a stranger. If thee wants to give the lessons, I won’t forbid it. But I won’t tolerate going about at night. It gives the appearance of impropriety where there be none. I expect thee will do nothing further that could jeopardize thy reputation— nor our standing at Meeting.”
He’s worried about his Certificate of Removal, Hannah realized as he turned away and walked in the direction of home. This has aught to do with my safety.
She felt weak, and a little dizzy. He might as well have announced he was converting to the Catholic faith, or that he’d hatched a scheme to defraud an elderly widow of her life savings. That the person who’d taught her the very rules by which she ordered her days and nights— that things were either true or not true; that fact and reason were superior in every way to supposition and passion—would be concerned with appearances was sickening.
She wished to walk until she understood his position, the way she would work down an equation until she’d arrived at the proper conclusion. But her father paused, turning briefly in her direction. Hannah willed her feet forward, and when he was sure she followed, he turned and continued toward home.
. 9 . Latitude
Aweek later, Hannah crossed the North Pasture in the glare of the late morning sun. Isaac was beside her. She’d been forming and discarding questions about his origins and experiences since she’d left a note at Mr. Vera’s smithery instructing him to come early in the day instead of after dark. Finally, she had settled on beginning with what was right in front of her.
“Does it look anything like this, where you come from?” she asked. The sun seemed fixed at 45 degrees above the horizon, the sky a patchwork of deepening blues tinged with silver. The toes of her boots were damp-dark from the wet grass. A cluster of sheep bleated weakly, their thick, muddy winter coats the color of dirty snow. In a few weeks’ time they’d be shorn to the pink. Hannah looked away. She hated the annual ritual of shearing, the chaotic terror of the animals. This year, though, the day couldn’t come fast enough to suit her.
Look for my bony fingers clutching the mast by shearing time, Edward had written. It’s possible you won’t recognize your brother after these few years but I shall know your face among a million till the end of my days—in spite of its gyrating into the most serious possible arrangement. From your last letter it sounds as if every Comet in the Heavens should be shivering in terror if trying to escape The Ever-Present Eye of Hannah Price. I am certain that by this time you may have already claimed Priority and that your friend and admirer George B. has built you a throne alongside the Great Refractor in Cambridge. Tho I am equally certain you will refuse to sit in such grandeur and instead claim a humble Footstool.
A gust of wind rustled the tall grass at Hannah’s feet. “I am not understanding.” Isaac cupped his hand to his ear. Hannah raised her voice.
“The island you come from. Flo—”
“Flores.”
“Yes. Does it resemble this at all?”
Isaac inspected the scenery. They’d come out on a footpath that would gradually give way from dirt to sand and sawgrass, and the track widened before them, leading them uphill at what could barely be called an angle. A gull circled, and he paused in his step, pointing to it.
“The name Azores—it is the name of a bird.”
“The Western Islands are named for a bird?” Hannah seized the tidbit of information like it was a revelation.
“Yes. But they name the wrong bird. The bird that has this name, Azore, this bird does not fly near my home. It is a mistake.” He began walking again, his stride matching hers, as if he, too, could walk for hours without tiring.
“You’re joking,” she said, shocked. “A mistake? Why did no one attempt to correct it?”
Isaac shook his head.
“I do not know. But the place is not like this. It does not belong to the fi n d e r s . ”
“The finders?”
“The people who are living upon it first.”
“The founders.”
“Yes.” Then he fell quiet again. As they walked, Hannah considered his statement. It was technically correct. Though Nantucket was part of the Commonwealth, and the Commons were shared among all the landholders, the ni
ne original families who’d arrived in the seventeenth century and settled alongside the Wampanoag still owned most of the Island’sproperty. ThoughJeremiahPrice—Hannah’sgreat-great-great- grandfather—had not been among those settlers, he’d arrived shortly thereafter, ensuring that all the men who succeeded him would maintain their places at the front of the Meeting House and the back room of the Bank and on the various Committees that oversaw everything from schoolhouses to poorhouses to cemetery plots.
After another quarter hour, the trail began to ascend further. Hannah had set out lugging the satchel containing the sextant, observing logs, Bowditch, and the rolled parchment map she’d begun with Edward what seemed like a million years earlier. Two hard apples from the root cellar clunked in the pockets of her apron. When they crossed the Commons earlier, Isaac had plucked the leather bag from her shoulder as if it weighed no more than an ear of corn. She’d thought to protest, but was now glad she hadn’t. Her dress was too hot for the day, and she envied his shirtsleeves and rolled-up trousers.
Fifty feet above sea level, with the sun fully risen above the horizon in front of them, they reached the top of a dune, and Hannah smiled as Isaac stepped up behind her and drank in a long breath. The Atlantic winked below them, deepest blue stretching impossibly distant, the little grey rooftops of ’Sconset’s cottages puzzled together a half mile away, but the clock tower and high chiseled rooftops of Town were invisible. They might as well be marooned, like Defoe’s famous character. Edward had spent dozens of hours in their youth trying to convince her to play Friday to his Robinson. The escapades he recounted, of mutineers and Spaniards and cannibals, ran together in her remembering.
“We are stopping here?” Isaac asked, and when she nodded, he released the bag, then lowered himself to the sand an arm’s length away. Hannah watched him move, impressed by the ease with which he unfurled his long legs and arms. He propped himself up on one elbow and kicked off his boots, unencumbered by skirts or propriety. She could see now how it was on his boat, how his grace would be ballast amid the chaos of the hunt, the clamor of the chase. That his hands could tame a reeling line that might slice a man’s arm clear to the bone as it whipped free; how the dead calm of his demeanor would clear the men’s minds as they skimmed the surface of the sea as if in flight, clutching any part of the boat to avoid being tossed over and drowned while the whale surged forward through her dark world, not knowing she was bound to her attackers by the wound itself, the harpoon lodged in her. That her next ascent would be her last.
Hannah sank down beside him, tucking her knees up under her skirts and leaning forward to let the breeze cool her neck before beginning to draw the tools from her bag and set them out on a square cloth.
“To me, Nantucket looks like a woman asleep,” she said, hoping he would say more about his origins. “I feel relief each time I return. Though, in truth, I’m rarely away.”
Even as she said it, a tremor of excitement hummed in her throat. After months of what seemed like stalling, her father had finally arranged for them to visit the Bonds at Cambridge. The mammoth telescope they were installing there wasn’t yet operative, but there were a myriad of other instruments she could use. The comet-seeker, for one. The thought of that special telescope, with a short focal length and wide aperture to admit unprecedented amounts of light, made Hannah want to spring to her feet and take the very next packet boat to the mainland and board a Boston-bound train.
“I am not seeing my home in . . . nine years,” Isaac said. “I had only fourteen years of age when I depart.”
Hannah raised her eyebrows. At that age she’d been daydreaming about star passages during Meeting and tracking a family of snowy goslings near Maxcy’s Pond. She’d certainly never been off-Island, save the occasional trip to Cambridge, where she and George had argued over the proper way to catalogue seashells and who sat where at dinner. She knew a few boys who’d lied about their ages so they could ship out without their parents’ consent. When and if they returned, to a one they’d hardened into men. They were proud, to be sure. But stunted somehow, Hannah thought. Like a crop that had suffered an early frost. The hardship and violence of a whaleship was anathema to growth. Whenever she thought of Edward in such a setting, she had to push the thoughts away, guilty for wanting him to have chosen a less dangerous path, one their father would have blessed. A position with a hydrographical party, for example, was something William Bond could easily have arranged. But Edward was loath to do it. The idea of being shuttled into an “acceptable” position like some noble chess-piece made him itch.
“Was it—did you wish to leave?” Hannah asked.
Isaac gazed out across the open water.
“Yes. I remember when we row out, to the boat. The Valiant. In the dark. I am going at night, so the soldiers are not arresting me. I am leaving because I am not wishing to serve the army of Portugal.”
“I see,” Hannah said, rolling out the parchment map and anchoring each side with a stone, then smoothing it down with the palm of her hand. “Were you alone?” She hoped not.
“My father is taking me. I can see my mother, and my sisters upon the shore. There is a moon— lua cheia—” He made a shape with his hands, like a ball of dough, and glanced at Hannah.
“A f ull moon?”
He nodded.
“And so I am having to hide, inside the boat.” He hunched down, to demonstrate. “I am looking through a very small hole, in the wood of the boat. I see my family upon the beach growing small, smaller. Before me is a ship. More big than any ship I know. My island is growing smaller and then it is gone. I cannot see it any longer. Now there is only the ship.”
No one Hannah knew had ever related such an intimate story. His words felt like a spell, and she was transfixed. Isaac reached down and let a stream of sand run through his fingers, then lay back, face to the sky, one arm cradling his head.
“In answering the question,” he went on, in a tone reminiscent of Hannah’s teacher voice, “Flores is very different from here. First, it is green, from the top to the bottom. Not brown, grey, as here. And it is different in shape—Nantucket is— como um gato—as a—cat. A cat stretching, long.”
He glanced in her direction and Hannah nodded that she’d understood.
“But Flores is more looking as a bear, asleep.” He curled on his side, as if to demonstrate.
“Flores resembles a sleeping green bear?” Isaac was so curious. Childish in his way, yet with the confidence of a man. The contrast was bizarre but compelling.
“It is.” He rolled onto his back again. “There are many hills, and clear water for swimming, and everywhere farms. The ships go to Horta, but men from San Miguel, Fayal, Corvo, and especially from Flores, from all places in Azores men join the crews.”
“Why especially Flores?”
“We are the most brave,” he answered, completely serious.
“Ah,” Hannah said, and began assembling the sextant. Index arm, indicator, arc, mirror. Anything she said would reveal how embarrassed she was for having presumed him incapable of more than a few cryptic phrases. Not only was Isaac articulate, he was far more poetic than she—or anyone else she knew. She feared that the wrong word would silence him. That he would reveal nothing further. Hannah kept her face neutral, hoping for more.
She needn’t have worried. Once he’d begun to speak, it seemed, he could not stop.
“Also, everywhere on Flores is forest, and field, and flowers, flowers. That is what means fl o r e s. There are one thousand different kinds of flowers, and as many colors of green.”
Hannah imagined them, pale yellow-green ferns to seafoam lichen, jade, emerald, moss.
“Flores is many places in one place. She is mountain and ocean. Rock and wind. All the year, wind.”
“Like Nantucket,” Hannah murmured.
“Everything is growing up—toward the sun. Climbing. And flowers, as I say. We grow many things, also. Sugar beet. Pineapple. Orange, on San Miguel. And . . . uva?”
“Uva. For vinho.”
“Grapes.” Hannah had plenty of Latin to her credit. Perhaps I could understand more of his language, she thought, thrilling to the challenge. Even if she could not shape the words herself.
“And how far from the mainland is it?”
“Nine hundred miles.”
“Nine hundred?” She looked down at Isaac, eyes wide.
“Very far,” he said, and sighed.
“We have some flowers,” Hannah said, a little wistful, looking toward ’Sconset. “By summer, all those cottages will be covered with roses. It’s like a storybook come to life, except for the hordes of bathers from the mainland. There’s heather, which of course you saw when we crossed the Moor. What else? We have sweetbriar and Russian olive, winterberry and larkspur. Hollyhocks as tall as you or I, though they don’t always flourish. Hawthorn, tupelo tree, blue ageratum. Heart’s ease . . . phlox . . . thyme . . .
“Corn and potatoes, which are the crops at our farm— you can almost see it from here. What else? . . . Rosemary. And the roses. I said roses. But they’re wonderful. You’ll see. If you stay long enough.”
They were quiet for a few minutes, listening to the boom of the surf below. She’d reminded herself of the hard grey chaos that awaited her in Philadelphia, and a hollow ache thudded like a funeral drum.
“And for how long are you remaining here?” Isaac asked, and Hannah wondered how he’d intuited her mental leap from his departure to her own.
“I don’t know. I may not. I mean, I may have to leave.” Hannah hated the coldness in her voice. She was afraid of saying too much, dismayed that she longed to say more.
“And where will Miss Price go?”
“Philadelphia, perhaps.”
He frowned, as if he thought it was an awful idea.
“Why?”
“Because my father so chooses.”
“And why does he choose?”
“It’s complicated.”
Isaac tilted his head slightly, and waited.
