It was gratifying to know that they enjoyed the approval of their enigmatic president, but for the letter to have been published seemed odd. It must have served some purpose. The remainder of the crew were given shore leaves with an extra month’s pay, and that was when the game became known. Their leaves were open-ended, and none of them knew when, or if, they might be recalled. The Congress, ever wary of hemorrhaging money to maintain the fleet, provided that if peace were reached with the Berber pirates, the navy must stand down. That news, and subsequent orders, would take months to transpire. Jefferson’s letter must have been intended to let the sailors know he was not ungrateful, and to sustain them through a furlough of indefinite duration.
Bliven sought out the purser on the receiving ship to make certain they would know where to find him. “Where bound, Mr. Putnam?” asked the purser.
Bliven waited until the purser dipped his pen. “My father’s farm, Benjamin Putnam, South Road, Litchfield.”
“Ah,” the purser said, and nodded in approval. It was a common reaction, for Litchfield, in western Connecticut, was one of the most desired residences in all of New England. “Have you a secondary residence in case we don’t find you there?”
“I will be nowhere else.”
“Very well.” He counted out the money—nine months’ active service, paid in Massachusetts notes, and the one-month bounty in silver that could not be depreciated wherever it was spent.
Bliven shouldered his sail-canvas sea bag, heavier than anyone else’s because it contained his books, and set off to the stagecoach depot to learn how long he must wait. Had he known when he would land, his father could have sent a man with a horse, for stage travel was an extravagance. But now, sending word home and waiting would cost more nights in an inn than the stage would cost.
He discovered that there was a new-cut turnpike southwest to Hartford, which was the straightest route, from where it was only nine hours more to Litchfield. But that coach ran only weekly, and its proprietor was keen on earning back his investment with exorbitant fares. Bliven instead settled on the south stage to Providence, then west along the post road to New Haven, thence north via Waterbury. That one left on the morrow; he read the handbill carefully and smiled. “NO NIGHT TRAVEL!” it boasted, and then in the small print of the itinerary he saw that the coach departed at three o’clock in the morning; those who missed the stage received no refund. Great God, he thought, every year it was some new trick; how much deception and sharp dealing must we take from our common carriers?
The coach was full to its capacity of twelve passengers; it was a great rumbling conveyance, more like a large farm wagon fitted with seats than a proper coach. The proprietor charged extra for more than fourteen pounds of baggage, although there was plenty of room for more than any twelve people could carry. They moved at barely a walking pace, less where the road was bad. The third day of travel brought him to New Haven, where Bliven switched to Mr. Strait’s coach north through Waterbury. As the turnpike approached Litchfield it widened into the South Road, and with only a moment’s pause Bliven was deposited at his parents’ door. His father, Benjamin, owned both a mercantile and a draying and transporting company in the town, and the house lay on enough ground to be considered a small farm, with an apple orchard. They lived adequately, although they had not come to it easily. They had lost everything during the British occupation of Boston and moved inland to start over.
• • •
BLIVEN PASSED the fall and winter with them, not needing to earn his keep particularly, but happy to lay his uniform aside and occupy himself with making improvements to their farm, for his father was no longer young and there were no other brothers or sisters to assume responsibilities. He was noticed about town as he helped at the draying stable, for as he turned fifteen he seemed older, nearly six feet tall and powerfully built, his sandy-brown hair now tied back in a short queue, his clear blue-gray eyes now more than ever making his natural expression one of interest and curiosity. He laughed easily and could make others do so.
On those occasions when he was seen in uniform, the students at Miss Pierce’s School for Girls noticed him particularly, enough to merit him an invitation to the school’s spring social, even though he was not one of Mr. Reeve’s law pupils, and they were the usual clientele for events at the Pierce School. The same post that brought the invitation also brought, at last, orders from the navy to report to Boston by the end of April.
In front of the oval mirror, Bliven donned his one dress uniform. Until the previous year a uniform might be whatever an officer fancied; only a few months since did the navy issue a formal regulation. Thus he donned his white knee breeches and stockings; black shoes; white shirt; white waistcoat; dark blue coat, with tails and a standing collar with gold cordage; and long lapels with nine brass buttons down each side, narrowing toward the waist to accentuate the breadth of the chest—which in Bliven’s case was quite unnecessary. There was lace to accent the coat cuffs and pockets, although not so much as on a captain’s coat, and to the left shoulder he affixed his single lieutenant’s epaulette. From his large canvas sea bag he extracted a neatly collapsed bicorne and pulled it open. At the time he ordered it, the fashion was to wear it athwart, with the corners over the shoulders. The growing tyranny of Bonaparte and his association with that style had spoiled it for everyone else, however, and now the custom was to wear them fore-and-aft. There was no front or back to the hat, except as defined by the small badge of red, white, and blue ribbon, which he wore on the right side. He debated with himself and decided it would be needlessly showy to wear his sword, and he left his eagle-hilt saber hanging from the ladderback chair by his bed.
Bliven borrowed his father’s saddle horse for the occasion; if this was to be his farewell to Litchfield society, he did not care to look like a country bumpkin and plod up to Miss Pierce’s school on one of their enormous dray shires. Riding through Litchfield Green, he could see the two steeples, one of the Presbyterian church, and one of the Congregationalists’, where the famous Reverend Beecher came to preach on occasion. Litchfield was an important community for Beecher to maintain support in. The census had descried 4,285 souls; only four towns in Connecticut were larger, but none had a greater reputation for learning and society.
Bliven turned up the North Road and soon passed Tapping Reeve’s law school on his left. Old Mr. Reeve was now a justice on the Connecticut Supreme Court, but this owl-like little man of sixty still gave most of the lectures, from a high stool at the front of his one classroom. In years past, one became a lawyer by apprenticeship. Mr. Reeve was the first one with the wit to realize that by systematizing a course of study and lecturing an entire classroom on Blackstone, or Coke, he could turn out lawyers like ginger cookies and make an entire second living by doing it. Such was his reputation that four in five of his students sought him out from other states, but from Bliven’s exposure to them, they seemed to dwell in a continuous atmosphere of such aggressive pettifoggery that he really desired no truck with them. And they who knew him only as the drayman’s son did not feel rebuked.
Within distant sight of the law school and across the road, Reeve’s dear friend Sarah Pierce and her sisters and nephew ran their school of even greater reputation, among females, than the law school. She was an arch, hard-looking spinster of forty who divided her time between teaching and raising funds and support in the community. At both tasks she was successful, for the school was new-built for $385 that she had raised from her patrons, and it was located next to the house that she shared with her other spinster sister, and where she had held classes until the separate school was constructed.
After tying up his horse, Bliven crossed the yard, aware of the gazes of admiration that his uniform drew to him. He entered and paid his respects to the Misses Pierce and poured himself a glass of punch. The school was a large single room, the middle partition of which was partially closed to create two connected chambers.
He made his way through, assaying the young ladies, smiling and bowing to those who acknowledged him. Near the back door was a steep stair to the loft, around which was gathered a small clot of young men that could only have been from Mr. Reeve’s school.
One had blond hair and three brown; the blond had blue eyes and the others brown—but what they all had in common and what Bliven noticed was their hands, white as lilies and, if he could have been induced to shake hands with one of them, doubtless as soft. They looked to Bliven as though they had never done an honest day’s work, nor were likely to. His own large, strong hands, even at fifteen, the sun and salt spray had cured like hams into the hands of a man twice his age. As he crossed the room it was apparent that in some of the young lawyers, who looked down and up his uniform, he was sure he detected the slightest pang of envy. There was, he thought, no need for jealousy. The navy would greedily accept any of them into the service. The navy was short, chronically and painfully short, of sailors to man its six new frigates and growing support fleet of brigs and sloops and schooners. The frigates were famous as the best of their class in the world, but their operation was crippled for want of experienced crews. Any of these Latin-spouting dandies would do, thought Bliven, but it would cost them their lily hands.
“How refreshing!” exclaimed one of the group by the stairs. “Here is someone who does not look to be studying law.” Bliven could not place the accent exactly, but he recognized the languid vowels and slurred consonants of the Deep South.
“Gentlemen,” he greeted them.
“What ship, sir?”
“Enterprise, sir, twelve guns, Lieutenant Sterett.”
Of the four Southerners grouped at the foot at the stairs, the one to whom they seemed to defer as a leader—whom Bliven took to be taller, but then realized he was really standing on the first riser—had a startling countenance. Features that tended in most men to be handsome were so exaggerated in him as to make him seem mistakenly assembled. He had thin lips across a wide mouth, but so wide that it extended end to end of a too-square jaw. He had a penetrating gaze, but of such scowling intensity as to betray the essential frost of his nature. He had ample hair, but so much that it erupted from his head wiry and unkempt and standing on end as though he were facing into a gale. There was something about him that was part John the Baptist, part lunatic. This odd young man rolled his eyes. “Oh, well, then.”
Bliven was unused to such a reaction. “Is that not a welcome name, sir?”
“No fault to you, sir,” said this specterlike man. “You were not in command. But it has been all over the papers of late that Lieutenant Sterett is dismissed.”
“Really? I have not seen it.”
“Is it not true that before you engaged the Tripoli, you were flying English colors, to draw her out?”
“It is.”
“Does that seem quite honorable to you?”
Bliven took some pride to have served, even if only as midshipman, on the vessel that fired the first shots of the Barbary War. They engaged, bested, and captured the corsair Tripoli of equal strength, killing twenty and wounding thirty without suffering a single casualty of their own. There was no fault in it. “Perhaps no one has explained to you, sir, that pirates fight without honor. Trickery is their biggest weapon; one has no choice but to fight on their terms. Did you know she struck her colors twice, and when we came close abeam to take her surrender, she resumed fighting, trying to assassinate our officers? Tried to board us, for God’s sake. Then we shot her to pieces until the lieutenants were dead and the captain was wounded and helpless.”
“A well-won prize,” ventured the blond boy.
“No, sir, it was against our orders to take prizes, for we had not yet the benefit of a declaration of war. After the fight we sent her into Malta, which was nearby. She had eighteen holes in her and we rolled her guns overboard; she will cause no more trouble for a while.”
“Why did you not just sink her and be done?” demanded the wild-looking one. “No question, then, of more trouble.”
Bliven cast his eye about the room, seeking an escape, seeing no point in explaining that such a course would have left them responsible for the care of thirty wounded and thirty more prisoners that they were ill-equipped to assume. His gaze met that of a girl seated alone by the pianoforte, looking about the room without expression. She was spare of figure, but her face was porcelain beautiful, her hair the color of fine honey, done up fashionably, a cameo mounted on a lavender ribbon about her neck. “Excuse me, gentlemen, there is someone I must speak to.”
Bliven approached the pianoforte. “Good afternoon, miss.”
She looked up, regarding his single epaulette. “Lieutenant, good afternoon.”
“Forgive my intruding—in my branch of service, there is a maxim that a sailor may seek shelter in any port in a storm.”
She smiled wryly. “Our South Carolina boys seem to have put you to flight.”
“They have the weather gauge on me, when they generate all the wind.”
“Especially the skinny one on the step, I’ll warrant, the one with the gleam in his eye.”
“Is he quite mad?”
“He wants to be president one day, and often says so.”
“Good Lord, how will he run the country? He can’t govern his own hair.”
A deep chesty laugh exploded out of her before she stifled it with the fan that concealed her from the nose down, even as heads turned away from their glasses of punch to look at her.
“I mean, look at him,” he continued. “He looks like he was hit by lightning. What is his name, anyway?”
“Calhoun,” she laughed. “John Calhoun.”
“Ah, Miss Pierce.” Bliven turned and greeted the headmistress as she approached; he acknowledged her with a bow.
“In default of anyone else to introduce you properly,” said the matron, “allow me. Miss Marsh, may I present Lieutenant Putnam? Lieutenant Putnam, Miss Marsh.” The schoolmarm backed away and turned her attention to others, seeming for the moment less severe than she had when he’d first greeted her.
“Miss Marsh,” he said. “Related to the town founder, I imagine.”
“My great-grandfather, yes.”
“A large family, I hear,” said Bliven.
“Yes, very.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “It must make your gatherings quite damp.”
Her face clouded. “How do you mean, sir?”
“Well, wading through the marshes, you see.”
She smiled and rolled her eyes.
“Perhaps it would enable me to distinguish you from so many others, if I may know your Christian name.”
Her gaze at him was even and pleasant. “Clarity,” she said.
“Charity.” He bowed. “How very lovely.”
“Sir, no, Clarity.” She enunciated it with greater emphasis.
He paused for a moment, embarrassed. “Ha!” he said at last. “A name that requires itself. Well done.”
A smile flickered across her face. “And your Christian name, Lieutenant Putnam?”
“Bliven,” he said.
“Bliven? Is it from the Bible?”
“No, ma’am, it is from Wales, a family name from my mother’s side.”
“Ah.”
Bliven had already admonished himself not to let any silence extend into awkwardness. “I do say, this is a handsome pianoforte. Do you play?”
“A little, yes.”
“Would you play for us?”
“No.”
The abrupt refusal startled him into a slack face.
“There are other young ladies here who play much better than I. Do let us allow one of them to show off, if she likes.”
“My apologies, ma’am. I did not mean to—well. Miss Marsh, forgive my frankness, but you did seem ill at ease before I came over. I hope I
have not offended you.”
“No. No, quite the contrary. But—”
Bliven inclined his head in earnestness to hear what criticism she would offer.
She recovered herself. “Do you know, I have it on good authority that Miss Pierce only pretends to host these spring socials for the purpose of stirring together the young and the eligible.”
“Indeed?”
“Yes, her true object is to show off her garden. Would you care to see it?”
“Yes, very much.” She led him out of the building, but tactfully through the front door so they would not pass the Carolina boys again. They rounded the school to the rear and found themselves at the head of a parterre of neatly trod earthen paths intersecting in a pattern of diamonds that covered half an acre. At the far end a small bench—vacant, she noticed—reposed beneath an arbor, and they walked leisurely.
“Four times a year Miss Pierce hosts a social for the students of Mr. Reeve’s law school,” she said. “We put on our best dresses and pinch our cheeks, and they come look us over. Sir, I think it is a cattle show, and yes, you judge me aright, I am ill at ease with it.”
“Fair enough,” he announced. “Ah”—he stopped abruptly where a rosebush was just producing its first flowers of the spring. He selected a large bud, deep wine red, and pinched it off, taking care to bend over and remove its two thorns before handing it to her.
Clarity touched it to her nose and they walked on.
“And who is that watching us from the rear door?” he asked.
Clarity glanced, though not obviously. “Miss Pierce’s married sister, Mrs. Brace. She must approve of you, or she would not allow us to wander such a distance. She might yet come after you with a rake for pinching one of her roses.”
The Shores of Tripoli Page 9
